The National Ringette League (NRL) () is the premier league for the sport of ringette in North America and Canada's national league for elite ringette players aged 18 and up. The NRL is not a women's variant of a more well-known men's league or sport like professional women's ice hockey or bandy; one of ringette's distinctive features is that all of its players are girls and women. As such, the NRL is the continent's first and only winter team sports league whose entire athlete roster is made up of women.
The NRL is semi-professional and operates as a showcase league for ringette in North America. The league functions as a committee under Ringette Canada, a non-profit sports organization and Canada's national governing body for ringette. It's Finnish equivalent is the SM Ringette league in Finland.
League history
Ringette is a Canadian sport that was first introduced in 1963 in North Bay, Ontario. For ten years, play was confined to Ontario and Quebec; however, the sport spread quickly and is now played by over 30,000 players and involves over 50,000 participants across Canada. The success of the 2002 World Ringette Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, where Canada won the gold medal, sparked the desire to create the National Ringette League. Former Team Canada goaltender, Keely Brown, was a key figure in getting the NRL established. The NRL was founded in 2002 and began play the following year, with November 2004 marking the start of its official inaugural season. The first NRL season included seventeen teams in three cross-country divisions.
The National Ringette League playoffs at the Canadian Ringette Championships (CRC) began in 2008 when they replaced the national championships for Under-19 years and Open divisions. Playoffs are held annually at CRCs to determine an annual league champion. Historically, they consisted of knockout matches, round robins, and tournaments in various cities, but currently the tournament takes place in just one city. The winning National Ringette League team is awarded with the Jeanne Sauvé Memorial Cup, named after Canada’s first female Governor General.
A 2009 episode of Rick Mercer Report called "Ringette Night In Canada" featured the NRL's Cambridge Turbos. In 2013, Télé Québec broadcast a short documentary film titled 'Tout le monde dehors - La Ringuette', which focused on the NRL's Gatineau Fusion, along with Yvon Brault, who devotes his life to this sport.
Structure and competition
Teams compete in two conferences: the Western Conference, which consists of teams from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and the Eastern Conference, which is further divided into Red and White sub-conferences and includes teams from Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. Currently the league operates based on hub-style tournaments, and a team can expect to host 1-2 such tournaments a season, while traveling for an additional 4-5. NRL games are divided into four 13-minute periods.
Characteristic of North American sports, the NRL is a closed league with no relegation. There is an annual draft in between seasons, which is the main entry for new players in the league. The NRL runs four regional drafts; in 2011, there was one for the region of Ottawa and Gatineau, another one for Manitoba, another for Southern Ontario, and another for the Montreal region. Trading among teams is also common.
Some players are selected from the league to help form Canada's national ringette teams, while the league also draws some international players, especially from Finland. In some cases, players have been traded between clubs in Canada's NRL to Ringette Finland's semi-professional ringette league, SM Ringette (formerly called ), and vice versa.
The NRL maintains a collaboration with the lower Ringette leagues in regards to the development of the young female players, therefore several teams of the NRL have affiliated development teams for Under 19 years old and Under 16 years old. The Canadian Ringette Championships for U16 and U19 takes place in the same place as the NRL playoff tournament elimination. It is this tournament which allows the tracers and talent scouts for the NRL teams to identify emerging young athletes as potential future NRL players.
In 2008, the budget of each NRL team varied between $15,000 and $20000. The teams and the league contribute to cover all the transport spending, accommodation, and rent of arenas. The players must find their own financiers to pay for their equipment and personal spending and the players are not paid for play.