Jana Headrick hopes her passion for hockey will encourage a group of young Indigenous girls to get in the game and stay.
Along with her women’s hockey team at the University of New Brunswick, the 22-year-old defenceman from Garden River, is giving Indigenous girls aged six to 10 a chance to play at a skills camp being offered in Fredericton.
While the girls take to the ice to learn how to pass, shoot and get up from a fall – Headrick also wants them to see that hockey can be a sport to enjoy for life.
“I just want to leave a lasting, positive impression on them for the game of hockey and try to make it as welcoming and safe a space as possible," she said.
Headrick hopes this helps them to continue playing.
It may be easier these days for girls to play hockey, but there are still fewer opportunities for young women to progress in the sport, said Headrick.
“Just having a place to play female minor hockey is something that’s still growing. Female hockey registration has increased dramatically over the last few years, which is awesome, but there’s still a way to go.”
Hockey is also expensive and lacks diversity, said Headrick, making it difficult for children from many different backgrounds to join.
Headrick knows the feeling.
While she has played with teammates from various backgrounds and cultures during her hockey career, she’s often been the only Indigenous person on the team.
“Sometimes going into a space and being the only person that’s different is something that would make you uncomfortable and might deter you from playing,” she said.
“I think just having somebody there can make you feel more comfortable, which will obviously make it a more positive experience,” she said.
Headrick has been playing hockey since she was three. Her parents, Anne and Dave, signed her up because that was just the way things were in their hockey loving family. She and her four siblings all played. Two of her brothers and her younger sister are currently on out-of-town teams.
Older brother, Owen, is with the University of Prince Edward Island Panthers and younger sister Mya is in Grade 12 at Appleby College in Oakville, playing for the Etobicoke Junior Dolphins. Mya will be going to Bemidji State next Fall, a Division 1 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) school, in Minnesota. Younger brother, Evan, 13, plays for the Oakville Rangers.
“When I was three or four, I really wanted to quit and try something else, maybe like dance or something a lot of the other girls my age were doing,” Headrick said.
But she made a deal with her dad that she would continue to play until she was 10 and could quit then if she still didn’t like it.
“By then I was playing on an all-girls team in the Sault and loving it,” she said.
It’s a good thing Headrick kept with it. After the Soo Pee Wee League and her time on the Wild Cats, Headrick went to North Bay to play for the Boltz in Grade 12. It was there she got noticed by the University of Toronto and accepted that school’s scholarship to play with the Varsity Blues Women’s Hockey team.
She graduated from U of T in April 2020 with an undergraduate degree in kinesiology and minor in Indigenous studies. She is now at the University of New Brunswick studying for her master’s degree in arts and sports recreation.
After graduation, Headrick wants to continue with her efforts to help Indigenous girls realize their dreams of playing hockey.
“I’m still figuring everything out, but definitely some of my major goals are to come back and do meaningful work within the Indigenous communities, especially back home,” she said.
“Garden River will always be home to me, and I think it will be the place where I will want to be at the end of the day.”