Ringette is a winter season team sport played on an ice rink using ice skates. From its beginnings on a skating rink in 1963 in Espanola, Ontario, the sport has spread to the United States, Finland, Sweden, and France. In Canada, an annual national level competition is held called the Canadian Ringette Championships. The sport is also included in the Canada Winter Games.
Ringette was invented in 1963 by the Northern Ontario Recreation Directors Association (NORDA), led by the two founders of ringette, Sam Jacks, from West Ferris, Ontario, director of Parks and Recreation for the city of North Bay, Ontario and Mirl ”Red” McCarthy, recreation director for the town of Espanola, Ontario. The title of birthplace of ringette is shared by both North Bay, Ontario, and Espanola, Ontario, where the first game was played in the fall of 1963 under the direction of McCarthy.
NORDA recognized the problem of limited girls’ winter recreational programs and decided to find a solution.
First league
In 1964-1965, Sudbury, Ontario formed the first ever ringette league, comprising four teams.
In 1979, Juhani Wahlsten introduced ringette in Finland. Wahlsten created some teams in Turku. Finland’s first ringette club was Ringetteläisiä Turun Siniset and the country’s first ringette tournament took place in December, 1980. In 1979 Juhani Wahlsten invited two coaches Wendy King and Evelyn Watson from Dollard des Ormeaux ( a suburb of Montreal, Quebec, Canada) to teach girls of various ages how to play ringette.
The National Association of Ringuette of Finland was created in 1983. Currently 10,000 young Finnish girls participate in 31 ringette clubs.
Ringette was introduced to Sweden in the 1980s. The first ringette club was Ulriksdals, in Stockholm. The national federation of ringette was established in 1990and the elite league Ringetteförbundet was established in 1994.
There are programs of ”twin towns” between Swedish ringette association and Canadian associations for the development of the sport within the Swedish population. More than 6,000 girls are registered annually.
IRF Competitions
In order to fulfill one of its objectives, the World Ringette Council scheduled the first World Ringette Championship for 1990 in Canada. The host city would be Gloucester, ON, just outside Ottawa. It was hoped that the event would be a catalyst for the member countries to establish elite-level national programs. Neither France nor Sweden was able to send a team so the tournament consisted of five Canadian teams, Finland, and the United States. Team Alberta won the event and hoisted the Sam Jacks Trophy, donated by the family of the man who invented Ringette.
Two years later, the next WRC was held in Helsinki, Finland. Canada sent two teams – Canada East and Canada West- to compete against Finland, the USA, as well as Sweden and Russia. Russia also competed in 1994 but since that time only 5 nations have participated, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and the United States.
In 1998, the WRC was cancelled as only Canada was prepared to participate in the event. A “European Tour” was organized which saw Canada and Finland play a series of games in Finland, Sweden and Germany. In 2004, it was decided that the WRC should be played every three years rather than every two. At its Congress in 2007, the IRF decided to add two more international events to the roster – the Ringette World Club Championship and the U-19 World Ringette Championship. On 2009 the first U19 World Ringette Championships were played in Prague, Czech Republic. The second U19 WRC was played in 2012 in London, ON, Canada.
After 2012 the U19 WRC was combined with the World Ringette Championships. The IRF Board made a decision which looks to the future development of ringette; the WRC was divided into two pools. Sam Jacks Pool would have Team Canada and Team Finland competing with each other. The Presidents’ Pool would have the junior teams from Canada and Finland competing with the developing ringette countries. With this decision to divide the WRC into two pools the objective is to make more equal games possible for the developing ringette countries.
In 2013 the IRF Board decided that the WRC should be played every two years in the future.
World Club Championships
In 2008 the first World Club Championships was held in Sault Ste Marie, ON, Canada. Four National Ringette League teams from Canada and two from Finland participated the tournament. Cambridge Turbos from Canada won the World Club Championship. Three years later the WCC was held in Turku, Finland, with two teams from Canada, three from Finland and one from Sweden. Lapinlahden Luistin -89 from Finland won the 2nd World Club Championship. On 2013 the IRF Board had to cancel the next 2014 WCC which was planned to be organized in Sweden, because of the financial difficulties of teams.
