I started playing ice hockey in March and at the beginning of May found myself on the Abu Dhabi Women’s Team called the Storms and headed for Hong Kong for our first tournament. For many of the women it was our first ever ice hockey game! It’s one sport that I never got to play when I was younger, but would’ve loved to. I had been reading a website about how they had formed a local team in October and were looking for people to join. For some reason I didn’t find out about this until March, but thought why not, here’s my shot to finally play at 28 years old! I did go to the ice rink one day to make sure I could skate and then figured it was time to go to practice. By the end of the first practice I had signed up for the team and at the 3rd practice I was going to be going to Hong Kong.

It’s probably the most random thing I have done in a while, but then at the same time it’s just another sport so maybe not so strange. The women’s team is made up of mostly local Emirati ladies ages 15-27. There are a few expats, a few younger ones and a couple older ones like myself, but they have played hockey before. I think the best part of joining this team has been that everything and I mean everything has been given to us. Our skates, warm-ups, equipment and jerseys all funded by the club plus the trip to Hong Kong! In a nation where women’s sports are far less developed then what we are used to, even the creation of the team is a big step and very exciting to be a part of it from the beginning. The support the club has shown for promoting the sport has been great and the fact that they entered a team in the Hong Kong Hockey 5’s tournament is a huge step forward.

In Hong Kong we played 4 games against much more experienced teams and while we lost 3 games, we did actually tie one of them! Thankfully we had a few experienced players including our Coach from Canada who played with us and helped a lot. This tournament was a big learning experience for us all and really encouraging for all the ladies to get back to Abu Dhabi, practice more, work harder as we look forward to our next tournament.