Globe and Mail Newspaper Wednesday, January 15, 1996 By Mary Jollimore Hockey Home Pages on Web Site a Boon for Women ANDRIA Hunter has done a lot of globe-trotting in the 20 years since she began playing hockey. And lately, people from all around the globe have been able to find out more about women's hockey on the home pages Hunter has set up on the Internet. "You know what everyone says, you're nothing unless you're on the Web," said Hunter, 28. She began playing hockey in 1976 on a girl's team in Keene, Ontario, near Peterborough, and continued throughout high school. In 1986, at the annual Easter weekend tournament in Brampton, Ontario, for teams from across North America, Hunter was scouted by Russ McCurdy, the University of New Hampshire's women's hockey coach. She accepted his offer of a hockey scholarship, earned a few academic scholarships as well, and graduated with a BSc in Computer Science in 1990. Hunter was the 1986-87 rookie of the year in the U.S. Eastern College Athletic Conference. In 1992-93 she played in a semi-professional women's hockey league in Langenthal, Switzerland. She also was a member of Canada's national team that won the women's world hockey championships in Finland in 1992, and in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1994. Recurring groin and hip injuries mean Hunter won't seek a spot on Canada's national team that will be seeking a fourth-straight world title in 1997 and a berth at the first-ever women's hockey tournament at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan. But Hunter hasn't hung up her skates for good. She plays for the University of Toronto, where she is a graduate student, and the Toronto Red Wings of the Senior AAA team of the Central Ontario Women's Hockey League. Her priority these days is to polish off her Master's degree in Computer Science and her position as a teaching assistant. The trouble is Hunter spends an average of two hours a day updating her women's hockey pages on the World Wide Web (her homepage is http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andria) and trying to keep up with an electronic mailbox brimming with messages from as far away as Australia and Brazil. Since Hunter began tracking the number of daily hits (calls) to her women's hockey pages in March 1995, there have been more than 25,000 visitors. What began with about 30 visits a day when she set up her web site a year ago has now mushroomed to about 300 a day. She established the hockey pages for one simple reason. "There was nothing there and I just thought there was a need for it. I thought it would be nice to have it all centralized so people could start here." Hunter's main index allows Internet surfers to find information on coming women's tournaments in Canada and around the world. There are profiles of players whose teams have competed at the three women's world championships since 1990, tips on shooting and skating, team photos, and information on roller hockey, ringette, ball hockey, and broomball. In all, there are facts on women's hockey in 24 countries, and surfers can leave messages in a guest book or read messages left by others who have visited the hockey pages. "It has been really rewarding for me. I'm surprised at the number of people who read the pages and sem me mail. A lot of people were writing and saying `I'm a girl and I'd like to play hockey; how do I get started?' It's really nice to be able to put something back into a sport I love," Hunter said. "Most of the messages left in the guest book are from North America, but occasionally I get an access from a country in part of the world where you wouldn't expect ice hockey to be popular. I found out they have a women's hockey team in South Africa." A lot of messages are left by fathers who want to enroll a daughter in hockey, or from coaches from places such as Las Vegas, Australia, Norway, and the Netherlands. A single mother from upstate New York left a message saying she became interested in hockey because she spend a lot of time at the rink watching her son play. When she decided to return to college, she chose a school with a women's hockey team so she could sign up. A 10-year-old girl in B.C. wrote that she's "totally wild over the Maple Leafs" even though everyone where she lives is a Canucks' fan. A man in Kentucky wrote that Hunter "should be considered the Canadian women's hockey ambassador." Inevitably, Hunter has received a handful of mash notes, which she says are "too personal to talk about. I think people have this image of women hockey players as having to be Neanderthal women. And I've put some [players'] photos on there because I think it's important for young girls who don't have any role models to be able to associate faces with players. We're talking about a sport where Canada has won three women's world titles. If this was men's hockey, people out there would know who the players are." ------------------ We welcome your comments. Copyright (c) 1996, The Globe and Mail Company. All rights reserved.