India’s national women’s hockey team has visited Canada in a bid to grow the sport back home.
The players from the Himalayas were in Calgary to learn from the best, with Wayne Gretzky making an appearance during their visit. They hope to use their experience to encourage more Indian women to lace up skates and hit the ice.
Diskit Angmo and her teammates have only recently picked up the game.
“You have this adrenaline rush, it's so intense, you never know what is going to happen, it changes in a couple of seconds,” Diskit Angmo told CTV Calgary.
“Being an ice hockey player it's always a dream to come to Canada. People coming to us and saying ‘We need your signature,’ it's a great feeling, it's really out of this world.”
Hockey in the Himalayas is usually played on frozen ponds using second hand gear.
“Back home there's so many cracks on the ice, we fall many times, but here it's so smooth and there's boards, we don’t have boards, we make like a boundary sort of,” Shabina Kawsar said.
The ladies’ determination has inspired NHL player Jujhar Khaira, only the third person of East Indian descent in the league.
“When I heard about them, I had to meet them,” he said.
With a report from CTV Calgary’s Brenna Rose
