“There was a mechanical room at the rink. They moved some buckets to the side and put one of them upside-down. ‘Sit on that and get dressed.’ It wasn’t really fun.”
That kind of experience might not make you fall in love with hockey – but Ali Simpson was already too far gone.
Simpson, now Ali Kincaid, was the only girl on her Yellowknife minor hockey team. When she reached 12 years old, she was kicked out of the boys’ locker room at the city arena and given a tiny broom closet instead.
It didn’t dissuade her. Through sheer force of will, abundant talent and even a letter-writing campaign, her hockey journey took her to the NCAA at Cornell University in New York State.
Kincaid joined Clams ‘n’ Moose – Camilla MacEachern and Sarah Erasmus – on their Cabin Radio show (Wednesdays 7-9pm) to reflect on her sport’s transformation from a 1990s Yellowknife mechanical room to the PWHL and huge NWT hockey camps for girls.
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Listen to her story on the Cabin Talks podcast and check out photos from her career on this page.
Want to get the show on another podcast platform? You can find it on Spotify, Apple, Google, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music.
Ali Kincaid: “I was eight years old. I started playing ringette, that was my introduction to ice sports and that’s what girls played back in the 1980s. I got turned on to hockey somehow, probably some other kids at school playing, and I thought it would be cool to give it a try.
“In my age group, there were no other girls in Yellowknife. You could probably say it was a co-ed league, but it wasn’t – it was boys. At that age, it didn’t matter. I don’t think anybody cared, it was just going out and playing hockey. It was awesome when I was super young, it was great.
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“When I was 12, they moved me out – girls can’t change in the same room as the boys any more. Back then, we didn’t get our own room. They put us in the broom closet, literally. There was a mechanical room at the rink. They moved some buckets to the side and they put a bucket upside-down. ‘Here you go, sit on that and get dressed.’ And that wasn’t really fun.
“When I was 15. I went to Calgary, to a sports high school down there. I played at the Oval. It was a training program designed for girls but mostly they were college-age, though, so I was young for that group and I didn’t quite fit in there, either. They were all in university and I’m 15, and it was a difficult fit. I got homesick and I didn’t last there.
“I went on to play NCAA hockey at Cornell, Big Red. I found out about university hockey at a hockey camp at Notre Dame in Saskatchewan. A couple of players at the camp were enrolled at Cornell. I started writing letters. I was playing in Yellowknife, playing in boys’ hockey and going to tournaments with my house league boys’ team, so I’m never going to get scouted. I sent letters to schools I thought were worth checking out. Cornell wrote me back.
“The first thing I remember about going in the locker room? There’s a big C on the floor. It’s a red carpet and it’s immaculate, with a big white C in the middle of the room that you cannot walk on. You’re not allowed to step on the C. A lot of the girls on our team in college lived together. Your schedule is super rigorous. You’ve got to make sure you have time for your assignments in between practices. You’re practising every day, sometimes twice a day, and you’re travelling most weekends. Your weekends are eaten up. You can’t party like your friends are partying, because you’ve got games.
“I remember going back for a reunion. It was 2010, six years after I graduated. At this point I had one kid and I was playing in the rec league here in Yellowknife, which is still pretty decent hockey. I’m in my late twenties. I remember going back and players that I’d played with in university were shocked that I was better, at 28 or whatever age I was, than I had been when I was 21, when I graduated.
“I can attribute it to playing in the rec league – it was fast hockey and good hockey. But also, girls are forced to retire from their competitive careers before they’ve even come close to reaching their peak. Most of us, if we’re lucky, we get to play collegiate hockey. Beyond that, there’s not a lot of options.
“If you love it, keep going. You might not get recruited for the college team or the PWHL but it doesn’t mean you won’t. Keep trying, keep pushing. Some of my favourite people just never quit. They were told no and they were cut from teams, or they weren’t allowed to play. I know women my age that were not allowed to play hockey as a kid because they were a girl. This is in the ’80s. We’re not talking about the ’50s. It’s crazy.
“Keep pushing and make space for yourself. If one door shuts, keep going and try to find the next open door, because it’s there.”
