New Women’s Senior Hockey League coming to Saskatchewan
September 15, 2025, 9:32 am
Donnie Matichuk
A brand new senior women’s hockey league will begin play in the upcoming season, with teams from all around Saskatchewan split into north and south divisions. It will have a 12 game regular season and playoffs. We spoke to Jenna Merk and Megan LeBlanc, co-founders of the new Saskatchewan Senior Women’s Hockey League, about the project’s past, present, and future.
The women are excited to see the league get started. “It will be our first year and we’re very excited. We’ve officially launched six teams in the south and five in the north. We’ll have a twelve game season, and then playoffs and provincials. It will be the full package of senior, competitive hockey,” said LeBlanc.
The two say there is lots of support for the new league.
“I think that playing hockey your whole life and moving away to play competitive in university, when you move back to Saskatchewan you get to see everyone’s boyfriends and husbands play senior hockey. There’s obviously that gap there in women’s hockey so we decided to fill it,” LeBlanc said.
Merk added, “It was evident that this was wanted, we had people reach out from Lloydminster to Kamsack to the Swift Current area wanting to play. Our job has been to lay most of the groundwork and try to establish some of the rules and regulations of the league”.
The idea has been in the works for several years.
“I moved back from university a few years ago and ever since then it’s been in the back of my head,” said LeBlanc. “We started getting together for real and having meetings at the end of last hockey season. Myself and Jenna are the co-founders and we both had similar ideas. We talked it through and thought ‘let’s do it, there’s no reason not to.’ ”
How much work did it take to get all 11 teams organized?
“Way too much,” says LeBlanc. “It’s 100 percent fueled by passion. Jenna and I put in long, long hours to make this happen in a very short amount of time.”
“We met in a cafe in Weyburn and started planning out where the hot spots were for women’s hockey players were, how many teams there would be and where, we just dove all in and decided that it was happening,” added Merk.
LeBlanc said they are looking toward the future. “We really want this opportunity for the future generations and ourselves, so every year that we wait it gets worse for us. I feel like there’s a big pool of girls who moved home from playing in university and don’t have anywhere to go. We thought that we might as well put in some work and set this up, then everyone can benefit from it.”
There will be 11 teams for the inaugural season.
“We announced 10 teams, but we had one more group that made a pretty good argument to join, so there will be 11 teams,“ said Merk.
“Last spring we sent a form around the province. Jenna and I are both from the south, so we sent this form out hoping it would hit all over the province to see where there’s an influx of girls who would play. We had over 200 people fill out the form saying that they were interested in playing,” added LeBlanc.
“We reached out to girls who had experience playing high level hockey and leadership experience and asked if they would want to manage a team. We told them that we’d lead the way and help them with anything they needed. We needed some people to step up and be team managers, so we reached out to people we could find and there were a few that reached out to us. The whole group has been great, every team has one or two managers, we really all worked together to make this happen. Over the course of your career you know most of the girls at the high levels, or know a friend or a cousin. You usually have someone in common.”
The teams in the league will be based in Grenfell, Midale, Rouleau, Gull Lake, and Vibank for the South division, and Humboldt, St. Brieux, Lloydminster, Saskatoon, and Prince Albert in the North division.
LeBlanc will be captaining the Southeast Saints in Midale, and Merk will be leading the Vibank Bruins.
The two say they are both motivated through personal experience of having nowhere else to play.
“There were still a lot of girls when I was growing up that played boys hockey, but now everyone around here plays girls hockey. I was always thinking about what these girls are going to do. My first year moving home was during COVID, and after playing hockey for 20-plus years, and then all of a sudden, nothing—that just gets to you and you lose yourself for a bit because there’s no opportunity to keep going with it. I feel like not having that opportunity, and realizing how attached people get to hockey, that was a big turning point for me and that really got the ball rolling,” said LeBlanc.
Merk also added “I went through this period of wondering if I was going to move overseas, or if I was going to start a career here. I really didn’t want to give up hockey. I was playing in a rec tournament and was talking to some of the girls from around Saskatchewan and they all said they would love if senior women’s hockey was a thing, and I felt the same way. Starting this was a lot of personal motivation, but it’s also to give an opportunity to all the girls that want to keep playing.”
“All of the men around here have also been so supportive, they all ask ‘How is this not a thing already?’ They want it to be a thing and they’re all super helpful. There’s also watching the younger generation and realizing that this gap in women’s hockey is only going to get worse. Every year that goes by, there’s going to be an entire graduating class that’s moving back to their small towns, and then what? We also want to keep playing ourselves, so we want to be playing in it too!” said LeBlanc.
They both see a lot of room for the new league to develop and grow.
“We’ve been working on a vision for where it can grow, but this year we’re just trying to provide girls that level of competitive experience in hockey.
Seeing the impact and seeing the amount of people interested, I’m hoping we get more teams and more tiers of women’s hockey in Saskatchewan. We’re hoping that one day this can be a league that keeps people home who would’ve gone oversees, because the level of hockey here in Saskatchewan is that good,” said Merk.
“There’s been a lot of conversations. There’s been some pretty insane phone calls that we’ve received in the past couple months. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but there’s a lot of directions this league can go, and there’s a bit of a wait-list. Next year we’ll be doing some restructuring and seeing where it makes the most sense to host teams. Our goal is to keep the quality of hockey good and competitive, so we’ll have a big learning year this year and we’ll improve it from here,” added LeBlanc.
Men’s senior hockey is a big part of winter life in Saskatchewan small towns, and the two believed that women’s hockey could reach that level as well.
“When you play hockey forever it’s more than just a hobby, it becomes your lifestyle,” said LeBlanc. “As life goes on hockey can be your job as well.
Your whole identity can be based around hockey when you’re from small-town Saskatchewan. It’s not always the most pleasant place to live when it’s minus 40 in the winter, but when you play hockey you know that you’ll always have your team and your sports in general to go to all the time.”
Not having that is a big eye opener and there’s a big gap there. I think there’s 20-some boy’s leagues for senior and there’s not one for girls.
Obviously someone needed to start it, if there’s 20 guys leagues there can be at least one for girls,” said LeBlanc.
Merk added “If you’re not making that PWHL level, there’s no farm team or affiliate. There’s no in-between level. On the guys side, when you graduate you can still play really good competitive hockey in Senior leagues. This league gives girls that chance to keep that passion going and keep playing after they graduate.”
The women both have big aspirations for what the league could offer to future generations of women’s hockey players.
“I hope it’s just an opportunity for players to still play. I think it’s a really positive thing for women in general, when you get to be a little bit older and maybe you start your own family, when you get into the day-to-day grind. It’s a place to go to not only exercise but also socialize and be a part of something that’s different than your day-to-day life. I think for most people it won’t feel like there’s a gap because the opportunity is there. Once you’re done playing university you just transition to junior or the U-22 league and then keep on going to senior,” said LeBlanc.
“I hope it builds a foundation for lifelong sport, and for sustainable sport.
I hope that if gives girls the chance to play at 50 in a rec league like they can now, but also play when they’re 26-27 and still be giving their all in competitive hockey,” said Merk.
They are both very excited to step on to the ice with the new league for the first time.
“I think it’s going to be mixed emotions. I think there will be a feeling of pride knowing that we were able to pull this off and actually do something for sports. I’m going to have a lot of emotions, I’m going to be proud that we put it all together, but also extremely, extremely happy to be able to try really hard and try to keep up with the younger girls,” said LeBlanc.
Merk said, “I think it’s going to feel surreal that we did it and that we created it, but I think that my real excitement is seeing where this goes in 5 years. Knowing that just because we started this we’re giving future girls the opportunity to play is really amazing”.
LeBlanc added in closing, “I think everyone is excited, it’s pretty awesome we have people reach out to sponsor you, and I think small towns always to a great job with community sports, especially hockey. We’ve had nothing but positive response and it’s grown faster than the both of us ever could’ve imagined.”
