Australian Women's Ice Hockey League shared Legends of Australian Ice's post.

2 weeks ago

Joan is our Legend.Joan McKowen
Honoured Member
Hockey Hall of Fame Australia

IT IS SAID a reading of the history of Joan McKowen is an instructive introduction to the meaning of love, commitment and unquestioned dedication. Born in Alexandria Victoria in 1929, Joan trained to become a nurse and married Max in Gardenvale in 1949. The fledgling, but active, Victorian Ice Hockey Development Council relied considerably on Joan's help preparing state teams, running development clinics, and coordinating summer camps, from 1972 until 1989 when she relocated to Canberra. Joan qualified as a remedial masseuse in 1982, complementing Max's work in sport's medicine.

The national secretary identified Max and Joan as a couple on whom the organisation could rely when it entered international competition for the first time with junior aged teams. From her first national in Romania in 1983, to the 1992 National Youth Team the year she died, Joan fulfilled a variety of formal functions, ranging from equipment manager to statistician, assistant manager to sports medicine trainer. She was a woman of intelligence with a cutting wit who was never short of a quip, a smile or a hug.

Max and Joan were fixtures in the ice hockey community, in Victoria, nationally, and in the ACT. So it was, the McKowen Memorial Trophy came into being for the National Women's Ice Hockey Championships, in honour of a tireless worker, a wonderful human being, who touched all of those with whom she had contact.

Hockey biography
icelegendsaustralia.com/legends-2/bio_mckowen.html

Jury
Allan Harvey, Rick Williams, Anthony Wilson, Stephen Kilgariff, David Turik, Mick Simmons, Rylie Padjen, Kylie Taylor, Glenn Grandy, Paul Rice.

Edit: copy of image corrected for typo in Comments section below. ... See MoreSee Less

Photo