The Kamloops Women’s recreational hockey league has a rich history starting back in 1978.
The first game in Kamloops was vs and Ashcroft team and despite the loss and borrowed jerseys, the results were fantastic. The phone was ringing of the hook for women looking to play.
A month later Mr Mikes sponsors a team and with some communication to the city, Sunday Ice at Valleyview arena was secured. That ice time is still used for the development of women’s hockey to this day.
In 1978 with some help from sponsorship, the interior league was created with 4 teams, 2 in Kamloops, 1 in Logan Lake and Ashcroft. The following year the Kamloops teams split into competitive and recreational teams, with the competitive team playing Bantam boys in the local league.
1981 Female hockey is established as an official sport in the BC Winter Games. The Kamloops Rangers went on to win medals in each of the games over the following years. The Rangers were also Provincial and Western Champions from 1990 to 1998.
In 2000 the Ice Box Arena created the women’s recreational hockey league with 4 teams and hosted an annual women’s recreational tournament for 8 consecutive years. The league grew league from 4 teams to 8 in a few short years. This growth inspired players to go out and create the first ever Women’s Masters Hockey Tournament in Kamloops in 2005. The Womens Masters tournament went on to be hugely successful from 2005 to 2015 with league players getting together to run this annual tournament.
The Ice Box arena went under new owner ship and the womens league had to make a decision, so we choose to run the league ourselves. No longer the Ice Box Womens League, we gave ourselves a new name KWRHL: Kamloops Women’s Recreational Hockey League. The league is operated by volunteer players who help organize, ice bookings, refs, scorekeepers and everything else that is required to keep the league operating.
League even had players going to Sweden to represent female hockey at a competitive level. We also have many women join our league at 40years young and are still playing strong 10 years later!
Currently, our league is still run by a handful of volunteer women who represent their teams and support female hockey. We accept ANY level players and play games on City ice between the 5 teams that we currently have.
