No Small feat Groundbreaking female goaltender named to Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame By: Mike Sawatzky Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 9, 2022

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This article was published 08/06/2022 (931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sami Jo Small never set out to be a pioneer in women’s hockey. She just came to embody the role.

Small, now 46, was helping break barriers in the game as a kid growing up in Winnipeg, although she wasn’t aware of its significance at the time.

Her father, Rod Small, proudly remembers the day a five-year-old Sami Jo started to carve out her own path in the sport.

“Well, I walked into the Norberry Community Club with her — her older brother played hockey — and she really wanted to play,” recalled Rod Small, who represented his daughter at Thursday’s induction announcement for the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022. “We walked up to the guy sitting in the registration desk and I said, ‘Is it OK if girls play hockey?’ He said, ‘I don’t see why not.’ He signed her up and the rest was history.”

Sami Jo, who published her autobiography, The Role I Played: Canada’s Greatest Olympic Hockey Team in 2020, has no recollection of the event. The harder work was to come.

“I asked him about that moment because I thought it would have been way more combative,” said Small. “And clearly, it really wasn’t. Somebody did tell him at one point that if I did play hockey, my uterus might fall out. That was one thing or that I might never have babies.

“(My dad) had an older sister and I didn’t realize this until I wrote my book but his older sister was quite an athlete and quite a softball and baseball player in the local community and she kind of dominated in all the kids games. And so he always thought that girls could play sports, which was pretty rare for a man at that time.”

How limited we opportunities for females in the game in the 1980s and ’90s? Well, Small played exclusively on boys teams throughout her career in minor hockey and she even played on a men’s team at Stanford University, where she was a scholarship track and field athlete,

Her first all-female team was Canada’s silver-medal-winning squad at the 1998 Olympic Games.

“To be quite honest, I didn’t know any difference,” said Small, prior to serving as an intermission analyst for TSN’s coverage of the world U18 women’s championship. “I didn’t have anything to kind of reference it to. And I really do think I was really fortunate that I had some really great teammates and coaches that encouraged me and allowed me to play and allowed me to be in the dressing room and part of the team. I think, along the way, had anybody been really miserable to me or made my life just a nightmare, I probably would have walked away from it.

“I mean, there was misogyny for sure. There were comments made, but it was often the opponents or the opponents’ parents. It wasn’t generally the teams that I was playing on. In fact, the parents of a lot of boys were very encouraging and very supportive. At the time in the early ‘80s, that wasn’t normal.”

Small, who didn’t become a goalie until she turned nine, said watching Winnipegger Susie Yuen play for the 1990 national team inspired her to dream bigger.

She said the true trailblazers were those that came before her.

“I really think our pioneers were all the women that didn’t get to play but wanted to play or maybe played for a year or two and then were forced out,” said Small. “They’re the ones that I really feel like we were able to stand on the shoulders of because I feel fortunate that I got to play. I was the lucky one for all of the hard work that all these women put in for so many years. I got to live out my dreams and make a career in the game.”

Small, who will be the third female player to be enshrined — after Jennifer Botterill and Yuen — was one of a group of six players, one official, one builder, one media inductee, two teams and one veteran selection whose inducted was announced Thursday.

The group, which also includes celebrated Free Press columnist and reporter Randy Turner, will be officially honoured at a dinner on Oct. 8.

Long-time official Ron Ottawa, a fixture at Winnipeg Jets games for the past 11 years as the supervisor of off-ice NHL officials, was thrilled to get the call from Hall of Fame organizers.

Ottawa hung up his skates in 1986 after a lengthy career as a linesman and referee in the university and junior ranks. He also worked as an off-ice official during the Jets 1.0 incarnation.

“I was shocked when I heard I was going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame — yes, I was,” said Ottawa, 73. “I really didn’t expect it. I mean, you’re doing something that you love to do. And to be recognized is more than one could expect.”

Another inductee, former NHLer Brad Chartrand, travelled from his home to in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to be at Thursday’s announcement. On May 22, he was enshrined as a member of the New York State Hockey Hall of Fame.

“This to me is special,” said the 47-year-old, who grew up in St. James and is currently the CEO of a U.S.-based medical device company and still heavily involved in minor hockey. “Even all my practice planning I remember is from (former coaches and Manitobans) Andy Murray or Greg Lacomy. Manitoba is special for me. So when this popped up, my grandma is turning 100 in the fall so we’ve got a dinner so I’ll be back. It meant so much to me what Manitoba hockey provided for me as a person.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14