B.C. Sports Hall of Fame honours PoCo Ringette co-founder

The godmother of Port Coquitlam ringette was posthumously inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame earlier this month.

Beverley Felske, who was also known as Big Red, Trail Boss, and Mama Felske, was recognized for co-founding PoCo Ringette, serving as director of B.C. Ringette and helping to create Ringette Canada.

It was all in the service of making sure girls had a chance to get on the ice, she said.

“I was on the board of the minor hockey association but I had no sons,” she explained to Coquitlam Herald sports reporter Derek Keeler in 1992. “I wanted my daughter to get the chance to enjoy skating as I had.”

When Port Coquitlam announced plans to build a new arena in the early 1970s, Felske persuaded parents to sign their daughters up for ringette.

“In 1975 when the arena opened, I had 64 girls and an association,” she told Keeler.

Several ringette organizations were founded in the years that followed.

“Several ringette organizations, including Coquitlam and PoCo’s largest rival, North Shore Winter Club, owe a debt to Felske,” Keeler wrote.

For the next 20 years she was tied to the sport.

“For more than two decades, if ringette was being played somewhere in the Lower Mainland, odds were Beverley Felske was there at the rink holding her trademark cup of tea, organizing, volunteering, coaching, and probably encouraging someone to sign their daughter up for the sport,” the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame announced.

Felske died in 2020.

She was named to Ringette Canada’s Hall of Fame in 2022, in part for her work building the sport in B..C.

“The depth and scope of Beverley’s work to sport in British Columbia is extraordinary. Her outstanding leadership can be found in many organizations across our province,” stated a release from Ringette Canada.

Felske was formally incucted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame May 16 alongside golfer Richard Zokol, skier Cassie Sharrpe, and baseball player, scout and executive Wayne Norton.