A hockey player in Saint John, N.B., is speaking out against a proposal to eliminate co-ed teams and force girls like her to play on all-female teams, regardless of their skill levels.

Latoya Burbridge, 13, says she doesn’t care who she plays hockey with but she wants to be challenged, which is why she has been playing on mixed-gender teams since age six.

Burbridge plays defence and says she’s good at protecting her goalie.

“My coach calls me killer because I don’t take crap from anybody,” she says.

Burbridge says she tried playing on an all-girls team and didn’t like it.

“It wasn’t competitive enough,” she says. “I was back-stepping instead of going ahead because I was doing drills that you do when you’re younger and learning how to skate.”

Latoya’s aunt Candy Bridges says a ban on co-ed hockey could have an impact on her future.

“Playing co-ed, she’s at a higher level than she was playing with the all-girls teams and we’re hoping that with this she may get scholarships from private schools,” Bridges said.

Support from a star

Five-time Olympic medallist Hayley Wickenheiser told CTV Atlantic that the proposal is “the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“To take away the opportunity for girls to play with the boys is setting our game back another 50 years,” she said.

Hockey New Brunswick’s response

Ray Carmichael, President of Hockey New Brunswick, says that everybody in the organization has a right to table such a motion and that his goal is to encourage more girls to play.

“I know it’s creating a lot of discussion but there isn’t really anything we can do,” he said. “We can’t circumvent due process so it will have to work its way through the system.”

Hockey New Brunswick will vote on the motion in June.

Former coach and Hockey New Brunswick member Marty Forsythe says he will vote against the motion.

Forsythe says the change could prevent some girls from playing hockey entirely because there might not be an all-girls team close to where they live.

“Chances are they’re not going to play,” he says, “so we’ve actually lost players.”

With reports from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore and Laura Brown