If you’re lucky enough to tour the Mount Allison women’s hockey team’s locker room, you can’t help but feel Mountie Pride. Behind the garnet-coloured door on the ground floor of the Veterans Memorial Civic Centre, amid high-tech gear and Birkenstocks, photos are prominently displayed from the team’s earliest days in 1902. This entrance tells a story of deep, rich, and groundbreaking history that the 2025-26 team continues in its 123rd season.

The women who don the garnet and gold have a unique opportunity in Sackville — they share their rink with their community. This allows the team to be decidedly connected to youth hockey, a relationship that Head Coach Addie Miles-Abbott deeply values and prioritizes. Recently, players from both minor and high school hockey were invited to join the team for media day.

Speaking of Miles-Abbott, the beloved head coach is now in her third season at the helm of the team. A Winnipeg native with HP1 certification, she brings more than X’s and O’s — she brings perspective, ambition, and an eye for growth. Her connection with the team is obvious as conversation, playful banter, and even fixing up hockey pants happens all around. She has created a culture of care, trust, and hard work, with the love of the game at the heart of it all. 

In December 2024, she was named assistant coach for Team Canada at the 2025 Winter World University Games in Torino — an appointment she describes as “a full-circle moment.” As a player, she represented Canada at FISU in 2011.

Miles-Abbott’s influence is evident not just in strategy and training, but in attitude. She emphasizes details — preparation, discipline, mental strength — and frames every game as a lesson. “It’s easy to count losses,” she said in past interviews, “What’s harder — but far more meaningful — is counting resolve.”

This team is taking the lessons to heart. They’re getting stronger, faster, and more aggressive. With veteran leaders like Mollie Grabe, Myah Stanfield, Julia Lee, and Chelsea Krahenbil, the 2025-26 Mounties women are poised for a competitive season.

The writing is literally on the wall for this team — the locker room walls have a few sayings painted in large, bold letters — “Fiercely Forward” and “Be Dangerous.” Every time these ladies lace up their skates, they sit beneath these powerful words. 

With recruits like Tiril Eiken, a defender in her first year from Lillehammer, Norway, this team is collecting talent both nationally and internationally and building a name for themselves along the way. 

Their staff unit also includes the legendary Carly Jackson — affectionately called “Ceej” in the Mounties locker room — an Amherst, NS, native who now plays goalie in the PWHL for Seattle. As a player development consultant, Jackson brings the same expectation of preparation and resilience that is coached day in and day out, but also gives these young women something to strive for. 

The PWHL is here to stay, with the league reporting revenues exceeding their targets for the first few years of the league. For young women like these talented and disciplined Mounties, that means the opportunity to make a living playing hockey— something that is very new in most any women’s sport.

This locker room, complete with a comfy sectional, Gatorade fridge, and even original Mountie artwork, houses women who are not just talented, but resilient, intelligent, tough, inclusive, and disciplined. This is the place where student athletes skate before the sun rises and get to class before some people have left their beds in the morning. It’s a place where toughness and tenderness mesh seamlessly, where teammates laugh, cry, and play spikeball, where every game teaches a little bit more about character and strength and resilience. At Mount Allison, hockey is for the women, and these women are ones to watch.