Sports/Recreation: Ice Hockey

The Women's Hockey Web
Amateur Hockey World Web Site

NOTE: These sites were reviewed in October 1998. Content & presentation described in this study may have been changed since that time.

The men's hockey site and the women's hockey site bear a surface resemblance to each other. Coincedentally, both use an icy background image, mainly white, with large, red, block capital letters for headings.

The content similarities end there, however. The majority of hockey sites, amateur, professional, youth and adult, were clearly written by men for men. (Boys and men still outnumber girls and women in amateur hockey 2-to-1.) The women's sites were almost purely statistical, with almost no ads for camps, products or paraphernalia: a depressing reminder that support revenue follows popularity and women's hockey is definitely in the shadow of professional men's hockey.

Web traffic in hockey-related sites is brisk and commercial. For the eighth consecutive season, The USA Hockey Association experienced an increase in membership registration in 1997-98. More than half of USA Hockey's 470,000-plus ice hockey members were registered electronically in 1997-98. (HockeyGrrls 1998).

The women's site Women's Hockey Web is produced by one individual woman, with no corporate sponsors. This site stresses the community of women hockey players, linking team pages and league statistics with familiar references and friendly photographs. A definite feeling of comaraderie surfaces, with team competition a central part of this site. Response to the page is encouraged and the home page gives credit to the participating members for much of the content. Email, guestbook and newsletter all exist to keep these women in touch.

The women's hockey site was unique in that it specified gender upfront. The vast majority of hockey sites indexed were assumed to be male-oriented, with small areas set aside for women's statistics. This page emphasized links, information and statistics, and was the only widely-indexed clearinghouse for women's hockey data found in this study. This site links to few commercial sites, and instead focuses on international women's teams, both amateur and collegiate. Statistics, league standings and photographs fill the categories of International, University, Player profiles, Tournaments, Camps and Cards. Also included is an extensive index, literally hundreds of direct links to team homepages and a cheerful FAQ from Andrea Hunter, creator of the page and member of Canada's gold medal women's hockey team at the Women's World Hockey Championships in 1992 and in 1994.

Isolating an amateur hockey page maintained by an individual man was difficult- the majority were exclusively owned and maintained by businesses and teams. The selected men's page Amateur Hockey World Web Site is a relatively non-profit site, compared to the vast number of professionally created and maintained pages selling hockey-related products and services to men on the Web at large. No personal contacts were included on this site and no sense of community was attempted, although the links to commerical sites were professionally designed and extensive. No photographs, few graphics and little but schedlues and announcements was emphasized. Few forms of response were included and little input from the user was solicited.

This site is sponsored by "Hockey Weekly" but the site is has no direct ads for this publication on the opening page and little throughout the site. However, many of the pages within this site bore a disproportionately large number of professional fan sites, replete with advertising, fan products for sale and sports-related trivia. This site basically provided sales links, with a minimum of original content. Schedules, schools, arena information and ads made up the bulk of this site, although the heaviest advertising occurred below the second layer of the site.

BEREAVEMENT

Each site was analyzed using a spreadsheet constructed of major points in the Sun MicroSystems "Writing for the Web" checklist (See Appendix B for the site analysis spreadsheet found here) The sites were compared on the basis of content (purpose, audience, technical specificiations, interactivity and theme) and design elements (layout, graphics, text, effects and navigation.) The results by topic are detailed below.

Last Updated: April 1999
Copyright © 1999 Tami Sutcliffe
All rights reserved.
Watercolours by Manette Fairmont: "Tuscany" 15x15 and "Field of Angels" 15x15
Courtesy of Left Coa

Last Updated: April 1999
Copyright © 1999 Tami Sutcliffe
All rights reserved.