Growing numbers being seen in LRA

By Lethbridge Herald on September 19, 2025.

Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

Lethbridge Ringette Association is skating into a new season seeing a growth in player numbers through registration and the continuation of  recently established leagues for older levels .

“We grew about 10 per cent this year and a lot of those numbers were in our Active Start program which is where we really wanna grow,” said Gordon Cox, LRA president.

“ We wanna have that base to the pyramid with the really young numbers.  Then that translates to bigger and more teams as they get older because as we know with a lot of youth sports, especially women’s sports, there’s a large attrition rate as they get older. So having that big base helps with that.”

LRA wants ringette  to be an accessible sport.

“We keep our registration fees fairly low,” said Cox.

“We think we’re probably one of the lowest ones out there for an ice sport.”

LRA is seeing success at certain levels and with different programs to keep older players coming back after high school.

“As a coach, one of my gages of success  has always been whether a player comes back to play again,” said Cox.

“One of the key elements is keeping that fun, developing social connections, and empowering them to be physically fit and be comfortable in physical fitness.”

A parent helped  create an adult-only recreational league.

“Which was a huge success and has got a lot of the adult ringette players a place to play without having to be on a dedicated team,” said Cox.

LRA offers two open teams with one being a mid-level team for players that can not play on a full -time basis but still want to play competitively while the other is the university program.

“We’ve had a great reception,” said Cox.

“Both open teams are full, no problem getting players there, and then the adult rec league I think has been an even bigger success than we thought it was going to be.”

Cox says on any given night there are about 60 to 70 players that come out in the rec league.

LRA will host their Bridge Battle tournaments  on Nov. 14-16  and March 13-15, 2026.

There were  local ringette players that outside of LRA time travelled to play in Europe over the summer.

The Southern Storm U14 team went to Finland and won the prestigious Lion’s Cup.

There was an open team that was made of Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Calgary players that had a fourth-place finish at two different tournaments and a U19 Grizzlies team that did not get the results they wanted to.