Guest: Toronto Star columnist Dave Feschuck

Between the professional hockey leagues, a new professional soccer league and the new franchise in the professional basketball league, women’s sports is flourishing in Toronto. Girls sports too — especially hockey, where enrolment of young girls is single-handedly driving growth in the sport. Today’s girls, at the elite level, face future prospects their grandmothers could only have dreamed of, but that also means they face a choice: should they continue to play on teams with boys, in leagues dominated by boys? Or should they take advantage of the many girls leagues Ontario has to offer.

Dave Feschuk and Kerry Gillespie recently wrote about that issue for the Star, and Feschuk joins host Edward Keenan (coach of a girls hockey team) to discuss the factors involved in making that choice, including where the strongest competition is, the potential value of playing with body contact, the social dimensions of the sport, and the avenues that exist to national or college teams.

PLUS: Special guest Irene Keenan, the host’s 16-year-old daughter, talks about her own experience playing alongside boys and in all-girls environments as both a hockey and baseball player.

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Ed Keenan and Paulo Marques.