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OWHA President Fran Rider Inducted into IIHF Hall of Fame

By Ontario Minor Hockey Association, 12/18/14, 4:00PM EST

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First person to be inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame as a Builder for contributions specifically to women’s hockey

The first person to be inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame as a Builder for contributions specifically to women’s hockey, Fran Rider is the very apotheosis of passion and determination, both for the length of her tenure as well as the breadth and scope of her remarkable career. Indeed, no woman has exerted a greater force or had a greater influence on the development of women’s hockey than Rider. Without Rider, women’s hockey would not be a medal event at the Olympics.

There would not have been IIHF support for a fully-sanctioned Women’s World Championship starting in 1990. There would not have been an unofficial tournament in 1987, and there wouldn’t have been enormous growth and development of the women’s game in Canada and around the world that led to that historic 1987 event.

Rider established the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association in 1975 and became its first executive director. Some four decades later, the OWHA remains one of the few organizations in the world devoted only to women’s hockey, and Rider is still the face of the organization. In 1982, Rider created the first national championship for women’s hockey in Canada. Three years later, she recruited the U.S. state of Massachusetts as well as the Netherlands and West Germany with ambitions to give the women’s game international exposure.

Out of this success came the first full world championship two years later. Rider continued to make connections and develop relationships in Europe, notably in Sweden and Switzerland and later Czechoslovakia. The opening game in 1987 featured Canada and the United States. The stands were full; the media attention was impressive; the IIHF took notice. “I didn’t see problems,” Rider said. “I saw opportunities.”

Those opportunities turned into support from Hockey Canada and the IIHF, and in 1990 the first official tournament was played in Ottawa. TSN covered the final game, another Canada-United States matchup, which started the great rivalry that continues to this day. Finances limited the IIHF commitment to a bi-annual tournament at first, and any lingering doubts of the game’s rising stock were put to rest in 1992 when Finland and Sweden played a thrilling bronze-medalgame that went to a shootout. None other than Pirjo Hagman, a Finnish representative of the IOC, was watching that game, and from there everyone involved pushed for inclusion in the Olympics, the clear and obvious goal which Rider had envisioned as a natural and final extension.

Rider was at the forefront of that push. The OWHA worked within Canada to develop the women’s game, but its role internationally was a fight for the greater good. When the Americans stunned Canada in the final women’s game in Nagano to win the first ever Olympic gold, it was women’s hockey that was the bigger winner.

Rider started playing hockey in 1967 in Brampton, Ontario. Her love of the game took her to starting the OWHA while she was still a young woman, and her undyingresolve got women’s hockey from ground zero to the Olympics. Indeed, 1998 wasn’t the start point for women’s hockey; it was the finish line for a marathon that had been started by Rider 23 years earlier

 

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