Ringette!!

TWEET! The ref blows her whistle, and the girl at center ice passes it behind her, to one of her teammates. The ring-carrier skates away from the other team’s advancing forwards. She passes over the blue line, and the ring bounces against the boards onto the stick of another teammate. She drives toward the net with strong strokes of her skate. The other team’s defense skates toward her, and one girl pokes her stick between the ring-carrier’s body and stick, and thrashes it back and forth. The ring-carrier spins, pivots, then, with a flick of her wrist, hums the ring into the top corner of the net.

TWEET! The ref’s whistle stops play, and her arms wave, signaling a goal. Then the goalie fishes the ring out of the net.

This is Ringette, the fastest, most exiting, non-contact teamwork sport anywhere.

The Play

Play starts with a free pass inside one of the five Free Pass circles.

The ring has to be passed over the blue line, and players aren’t allowed to have the ring on both sides of the blue line. Because of this, the team without the free pass covers the other players so they can intercept the pass. When the ring is brought into the Free Play Zone, only three players are allowed in, the two forwards and center, then for the other team, two defense, center, and goalie. But players are allowed to switch positions on ice, and allow the defense to go in. This causes confusion, in the zone and helps break down the defensive triangle.

Strategies

The defensive triangle is a common play which is used when the ring in the team’s own zone. The defense and center form an imaginary triangle and skate to fill it in. For example, if the left defense skates behind the net, another player will skate to the spot she just left. This makes it hard for the other team to find an opening in the net to get a goal. And the other team will not be able to get in very close, and may be forced outside of the Free Play Line, and the team’s forwards can check them to get the ring.

To get rid of that, the other team will have an offensive triangle. This works in the same way of the defensive triangle, with the exception that this team is the ones with the ring. After all, if the other team had it, they would be skating up to the other end instead of wasting time skating circles.

Since they have the ring, they pass it around to catch an opening. Openings can be created a million ways. One is to have the ring carrier skate to one side of the boards. The other two players can skate towards the other side, setting themselves up in the slot, AKA the back door. The slot is the space between the hash marks and the goalie crease. The ring carrier has most of the defense on the other side, checking her, so her teammates are wide open. One short pass across the crease, the player picks it up, and shoots it into the net.

This works really good, but I played in a game once where it didn’t. A defense was standing outside the top of the crease, and the pass hit her skate. Instead of going across to be shot in, it bounced into the net. It counted, and it happened again. But that time the goalie stopped it!

Penalties

Penalties are easy to get in a non-contact sport. Tripping, slashing, checking, etcetera are not allowed. Some people say that Ringette is a wimpy sport because of that. But that makes it harder because you can’t just trip someone and take the ring. Or you can’t body check, although sometimes players get desperate and do anyway. Sometimes the refs are bad and so players get mad. A girl on my team was being elbowed in a provincial bronze medal game, which the ref wasn’t calling for a penalty. She fell down, got up, and socked her in the head. She was also kicked out for the remaining 1:06 minute game. We were losing, but she said she didn’t punch her just because she was a poor loser. It was the reffing. She also had to miss the next two games of the next year and go to a hearing of some kind!

Invented by Sam Jacks of Ontario in 1963, it was originally girls’ alternative ice sport. Red McCarthy was asked to experiment with the main Ringette rules that same year. The first Ringette game was played by an Espanola, Ontario woman’s high school hockey team.

The rules were experimented with in a few of the towns in Northern Ontario, and in 1964 the first complete set of Ringette rules were compiled. The original rules were introduced in Quebec, in the Town of Mount Royal, by a friend of Sam Jacks, Herb Linder. For the next ten years, Ringette was played mostly in Ontario and Quebec.

Ringette Canada was formed in 1975, just twelve years after its invention. Now, Ringette is played in all provinces and territories, with over 50 000 players across Canada. Ringette has associations in over five countries. The Fourth World Ringette Championships were held in 1996, with Canada taking the gold.

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Definitions!

Checking is when a player slides the stick under the ring carrier’s stick, and pulls it up hard and quick. If the ring carrier doesn’t have enough pressure on her stick, then the check will bring it up, and the checker will get the ring.

The Ring-carrier is the girl who has the ring

A Free-Pass is pretty much the same as a hockey to a face-off, with big differences. There is only one player inside the circle, and she’s got to pass it outside of the circle in five seconds after the ref blows the whistle. She is only allowed in the upper half of the circle, and no other players are allowed inside the circle until the ring is out.

The Free Play Zone is the sections at each end of the ice that end at the top of the free-pass circles.
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