We recently spoke with Marg Holman from the Calgary Women's Spring Hockey Tournament, an annual tournament in Alberta that is growing at an alarming rate and helping with the expansion of women's hockey. Here is what Marg had to say!

We run our tournament usually in the month of April - 2017 was our sixth year in operation.

We are two women who get pleasure out of providing a hockey tournament to women, no matter the skill set you have or how old you are. We have a steady group of friends that play and volunteer throughout the weekend. No one gets paid, we either donate the money we make or put it back into the tournament. We pay for Professional First Aid all weekend, a two-man reffing system and trained scorekeepers.

The tournament started in 2012 at one arena, the Fairview Arena with eight teams in two divisions. The tournament has been growing very steadily ever since. In 2016, we had the pleasure of working with the Calgary Inferno who successfully won the Clarkson Cup in the CWHL. They graciously shared the cup in photos on Sunday during team photos and prize presentations.

This year, we had a live auction for an elite dressing room and donated the proceeds along with personal donations to Kids Sport Alberta, to the amount of $3200.00. Kudos to all the generous players.

There are a lot of tournaments out there, but we try to keep the competition on par with each other, of course we ask for teams to be honest and evaluate themselves according to our Division Descriptions, so far it’s been pretty good.

We have plenty of prizing, social opportunities, divisions and skill levels for all ages, and lots of time allotted for team bonding.

In the professional world of women's hockey it was interesting to read that just before the Women’s Hockey World Cup that Team USA approached USA Hockey for equitable pay and programming as to what the men’s teams are getting. More interesting is that Hockey USA paused and fail to deal with this in a prompt and fair manner. I for one am glad that the ladies held out and were ready to boycott the Cup. All players should be treated fairly within their ranking and to not offer the programming for females to grow their sport as they do the men’s was really disappointing. But it all turned out fairly well in the end and I don’t think you will see this happen again in the near future.

Hopefully we see some of you at the Calgary Women's Spring Hockey Tournament next year!

Visit their website for more information!