As I looked around at Swiss Arena in Kloten watching the Swiss Women's National Team play in a Women's Euro Hockey Tour tournament last weekend, I was thinking about what gaps I could help fill, or rather bridges I could help build, to see more people enjoying women's ice hockey games around Switzerland this season.

I thought about my own (embarrassingly recent) discovery of Swiss women's ice hockey. Despite being in Switzerland for more than a decade, and a long-time fan of hockey*, and a long-time proponent of gender equality, I was completely unaware of women's hockey here. It was the announcement of the creation of a new women's team within the EVZ club that caught my attention in early 2023, and I was more than happy to become a season's pass holder from the start two years ago. I quickly became an avid fan of the Zug and Swiss women's teams (though arguably now outshone by my teenage daughter's fanship). I regret, though, the years that I could have been supporting teams not much further away, had I realised they were there.

Now, when I'm not inviting people to come to Zug home games or National Team games, I often find myself encouraging folks to find a women's team near them to support (or looking for one myself when I will be oot and aboot** around the country). Having not found an easy solution for doing that, I decided to make one!

As I wanted to really discover the teams and locations myself, I took the time to visit the websites each of the teams listed in the Post Finance Women's League (PFWL) and Swiss Women's Hockey League (SWHL) B, C and D pages of the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation website, and checked games listed the SIHF app for the names of arenas I didn't find on the sites. I mapped more than 50 teams and almost as many arenas, and discovered that some arenas are home to 2 or more women's teams, while some teams plays their home games in 2 or more different arenas.

I'm sharing it with you so that this little bridge (well, map) can connect potential fans to the teams they didn't even know are playing nearby. For now, it's a custom Google map called Where Women’s Ice Hockey teams play across Switzerland. The arenas used by teams in the PFWL (Post Finance Women's League, the top division in Switzerland) are shown in purple, while those of the remaining 3 divisions, the SWHL (Swiss Women's Hockey League) B, C and D are shown in red. If you find an error or have a suggestion for improvement, please let me know!

I know that there is vast potential for improvement and that more and bigger bridges are needed bring the enjoyment of women's hockey to more people, and - on the flip side - to bring more support to women's teams, so I'm reflecting deeply on how I can help: there is so much more I want to do!

In the meantime, if this gets a few more people into the audiences of women's ice hockey games around Switzerland this season, I would love to hear about it.

What (else) do you need to find and support a women’s ice hockey team near you? Let me know in the comments (or privately if you prefer)!

*I'm Canadian; the "ice" in "ice hockey" is usually silent.

** When I speak, the ice may be silent but - so I'm told - my Canadian accent is not.

Note: this was originally posted as a LinkedIn article, which can be found, with its original comments at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bridging-awareness-gap-potential-fans-switzerlands-womens-force-vbqwf/.

You can access the map with a pre-set focus on Switzerland here.