Full steam ahead for new Nunavut girls’ hockey association

The newly formed Nunavut Fury Hockey Association is set to launch in Rankin Inlet this week with its first under-19 women’s hockey camp.

It starts one day before the under-19 women’s territorial hockey tournament, which goes from Feb. 13 to 16, also in Rankin.

“Our mission is to promote and develop competitive female hockey in Nunavut by providing opportunities for skill development, leadership and personal growth both on and off the ice,” said Max Joy, the sole male coach on the three-coach roster leading the camp with six on-ice helpers.

Rather than organizing games, the association will teach skills that the players can take back to their home communities.

Joy, born and raised in Iqaluit, finished his four-year junior hockey career with the Notre Dame Hounds in Saskatchewan with a career-ending  back injury. That propelled him into coaching, and since then he has led Nunavut teams to two Arctic Winter Games as well as the Canada Winter Games.

Stella Mossey plays defence with the under-19 female Iqaluit Blizzard team. She has played hockey for a decade and hopes to coach one day. (Photo courtesy of Stella Mossey)

He is slated to lead the under-19 girls as head coach for the 2026 Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse.

The hockey association’s chair, Lauren Perrin, is head coach of the Iqaluit Blizzard under-19 Major Female Division team. She will also be coaching the 75 girls registered for the camp in Rankin Inlet.

While the older girls compete at the Territorials, the under-13 players will continue to attend the camp.

In addition to the on-ice drills led by Joy, Perrin has designed an off-ice curriculum that touches on leadership, physical fitness and the maintenance of mental health.

“We’ve developed some off-ice conditioning workout plans to introduce the girls to what off-ice conditioning should look like for the off-season,” she said. For that, she was assisted by Breton McNeil, a former high-performance strength and conditioning coach with the University of Cape Breton Eagles hockey team in Nova Scotia.

“As well, there are some team-building activities we’ve put together,” Perrin said.

Information on maintaining good mental health will be introduced to the players through the lens of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or Inuit traditional knowledge. That will be done by workers from Ilitaqsiniq, the Nunavut Literacy Council, a non-profit focused on cultural programming.

“There’s a lot of life lessons to be learned through high-performance competition,” Perrin said. “Providing a bit of high-performance training for these kids will be good for them.”

Stella Mossey, 16, is participating in the camp and competing at the Territorials as a member of the under-19 Iqaluit Blizzard. She also plays in Iqaluit with the under-18 boys team. She has played hockey in Nunavut for the past decade and to say she looks forward to the camp is an understatement.

“I am so excited and so grateful,” Mossey said. “It means a lot. It really means a lot.”

The Rankin Inlet camp is just the beginning, said Perrin.

“We’re going to be doing some awesome things in years to come,” she said. “We’ve hit the gas pedal, so we are not stopping anytime soon.”