Queen’s University women’s hockey Golden Gaels start another season

KINGSTON, Ontario – Women’s hockey and Queen’s University are synonymous.

History notes that in 1894, a female club team, dubbed, ‘The Love Me Littles’, formed at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and caused such a social stir that the Archbishop of the University tried to get it shut down.

Not only did he fail in shutting it down but the love of women’s hockey grew exponentially.

Two years later, women’s teams started playing organized hockey games at McGill University in Montreal and in the Ottawa Valley.

Over the centuries, The Love Me Littles’ evolved into the Golden Gaels and starting Nov. 5, another season of Queen’s University Golden Gaels hockey begins.

Katherine ‘Cookie’ Cartwright

Women’s hockey at Queen’s university has a long, storied tradition attached to it.

The University of Toronto and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario were two of the earliest Canadian universities to field women’s ice hockey teams, dating all the way back to the 1890s.

Queen’s would discontinue its women’s hockey program soon after and it wasn’t resurrected again until the 1960s when a soon-to-be Kingston legend stepped onto the scene.

Katherine ‘Cookie’ Cartwright grew up skating and playing hockey with her family and friends on the St. Lawrence River as soon as the conditions would allow. She loved the game. The freedom she felt when skating at top speed and staring into the limitless distance ahead. She was eager to play competitively but had no option.

At the time, hockey was a male-dominated domain. Women were allowed to cheer but they weren’t allowed to play. Cartwright aimed to change that.

Queen’s University Women’s Hockey is born

When Cartwright entered Queen’s University, she noticed that intermural athletics were available and popular but intercollegiate sports for women were nonexistent.

The main obstacle at the time was money for equipment.

In 1959, women’s sports at Queen’s university had an annual budget of $4,000 dollars or the same amount that was budgeted to the cleaning staff for the men’s football team.

After being loaned some hockey equipment that had been “sitting in moth balls since 1938,” the campaign to start playing hockey competitively in an all-women’s collegiate league was on.

For a few years, six University women’s teams:  Queen’s, McMaster, Guelph, Western, McGill and Toronto played in a series of exhibition games and then in 1964, the games had become an official record of university athletics.

Cartwright and the Golden Gaels would go on to capture the first women’s university championship.

The Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Conference

Currently, the Lady Golden Gaels play in the Ontario University Athletics Conference which came into being in 1997 with the merger of the Ontario Universities Athletics Association and the Ontario Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics Association.

There are currently 12 women’s University hockey teams in the OUA: Nipissing, Ontario Tech, Queen’s, Ryerson, Toronto and York in the Eastern Division with Brock, Guelph, Waterloo, Western, Wilfrid Laurier and Windsor playing in the Western Division.

Each team plays a 20 game schedule. The top three teams in each division qualify for the OUA playoffs, which takes place using a “Final Four” styled format.

Queen’s University Lady Golden Gaels

Led by two-time OUA coach of the year winner, Matt Holmberg, the modern version of the Lady Golden Gaels are entering the 2021-22 campaign – his 16th behind the bench – as favorites to make another deep run at the CIS Championship.

Under his guidance, the Lady Golden Gaels have registered 14 or more wins in the regular season and made the playoffs in all 16 years, advancing to four USPORTS Women’s Hockey Championship appearances along the way.

Lady Golden Gaels Trivia

• Queen’s University and the University of Toronto were two of the first Canadian universities to field women’s ice hockey teams in the 1890s.
• The 1964 Queen’s Golden Gaels won the first women’s university hockey championship ever awarded.
• On March 3, 2011, a playoff game between the Queen’s Golden Gaels and the Guelph Gryphons became the longest collegiate hockey game, male or female, Canadian or American — ever played. The game began on Wednesday and ended the day after.

  The official duration of the match was 167 minutes and 14 seconds (a six-overtime marathon) that mercilessly ended when Queen’s forward Morgan McHaffie banged a rebound past Gryphons goalie Danielle Skoufranis.

  The Lady Golden Gaels would win the OUA Championship that year – their first in 32 years.

• Elizabeth Graham (Queen’s University goaltender) is credited as the first goalie to ever wear some facial protection (a mask) during a game. As the local legend goes, in 1927, Graham had some dental work done and the only way she could think of to avoid any addition dental costs for her dad – her father had spent all he had to get her into Queen’s – and play hockey was to wear  a fencing mask over her head. The Kingston Whig-Standard (a local newspaper at the time) noted how she “gave fans quite a surprise.”

Lady Golden Gaels 2021-22 Season is here

The COVID-19 pandemic has canceled the previous two seasons of OUA women’s hockey but everything is ready for the 2021 campaign. All exhibition games have been played and a new season of Golden Gaels hockey is here.

In a few days’ time, 3,000 fans at the Kingston Memorial Centre will be rocking to the sounds of blaring music jumping off the arena speakers and hockey being played on the ice.

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