Lady Flags Support The Mooretown Sports Complex Renewal Project!!
Submitted By kaylen on Wed 10 30, 19
Mooretown Lady Flags is headquartered at the Mooretown Sports Complex in the Township of
St. Clair. We run a robust and growing girls hockey program with the goal to provide a place for
all girls to play hockey in our community. We strongly believe every girl who wants to lace up
her skates should be able to, and every girl in our community should be able to play on a team
that matches her skill level. For the 2019/20 season, we are running a new and growing
Instructional and Initiation program, in addition to both house league and competitive teams in
the Novice and Atom divisions as well as a competitive Peewee team. We are growing our
hockey program as our girls age up, and have goals to run Bantam and Midget teams as well in
the near future.
We work collaboratively with both Mooretown Minor Hockey and Mooretown Flags on several initiatives throughout the year and value our relationship with the other user groups who share space at Mooretown Sports Complex.
We use Mooretown Sports Complex as our home ice, hosting weekly practices and games there for all of our hockey programming. For the first time ever, we had a need to expand and pick up ice at Walpole Island this season. Both Novice and Atom teams and our Peewee team now each head down river 1-2 times per month on a rotating schedule in order to fulfill our ice requirements.
The value of the Mooretown Sports Complex Renewal Project really can't be underestimated as it relates to the success of girls hockey in our community. We understand the fragility of the state of our current rink cooling systems and appreciate the great work the arena staff has done and continues to do in order to keep these rinks operational. We understand, however, that we are very much on borrowed time and there is a clear risk to our ability to run any girls hockey in our community without MSC remaining fully operational. There is no plan B. If we lose our rinks, our girls lose their season. Our sanctioning body, OWHA, allows full and undeniable movement of players from one season to the next. Releases must be issued when requested.
This means that if we were to lose a rink, or two, our players could and absolutely would leave our community to play hockey elsewhere, if they didn't just quit hockey altogether. If we had any lapse in our ability to run our program, it would devastate girls hockey in our community. And the stats we are already combating are scary. Girls drop out of sports at 1.5 times the rate that boys do by age 14. By age 17, more than half of girls will quit playing sports altogether. But girls who stick with sports are more likely to develop better self-esteem, body image, academic performance and personal relationships. Further, 94% of women holding CEO positions played organized youth sports. A full 54% played a competitive sport at the university level. These girls get their start in communities like Mooretown. We cannot fail them.
We strongly believe that our girls deserve an equal hockey experience as boys in our community, but we know that we already have to do more just to make that possible.
It really can't be overstated. The investment into the Mooretown Sports Complex Renewal Project is paramount to our continued success, period.
Thank you,
Mooretown Lady Flags