A celebrated UBC field hockey player, 1971/72 until 1975/76, Shelley Winter was a league MVP, Sportsmanship award winner, UBC’s outstanding female athlete winner as well as a member of four Canada West champion teams. This 1984 Olympian played more than 10 years on Canada’s National team and is the first Canadian woman to play in 100 international field hockey matches.
Following an outstanding Oak Bay high school career in Victoria, BC, where she was selected the school's outstanding athlete of 1971, Shelley played five years with the UBC field hockey team from 1971/72 until 1975/76. 'Bim' Schrodt was her coach the first three years while Gerry Gilmore coached her last two. In four of those five years UBC was Canada West champion in large part through the work and skill of Shelley Winter.
With UBC in 72/73, she was the Vancouver Field Hockey Assn. MVP (Watson Trophy) the same year she was awarded the Joan Livesey Memorial Sportsmanship Award. In her final year at UBC, 1976, Shelley was presented the Marilyn Pomfret trophy as UBC's Female Athlete of the Year. Her UBC teammates remember her as an "incredible athlete" and a "quiet leader." She was "very reliable, hard working with a good attitude."
In addition to leading UBC in both Canada West and City League competition, Shelley was embarking upon an impressive career as a player on Canada's National Field Hockey team.
Starting while at UBC in 1975 through to 1986, Winter was selected to play on Canada's team each of those twelve years. She is one of only three women in Canadian field hockey history (and the only one from BC) to play more than ten years for Canada's team – her 12 years being more than twice as many as the next highest UBC representative. She also has the distinction of being the first Canadian female player to appear in more than 100 international test matches.
It was speed and finesse that were Shelley's main assets both in scoring goals and preventing them. She was lauded by her teammates for her competence, her consistency and the fact she was a "real leader."
Shelley played for Canada at the 1984 Olympics where this country placed a respectable fifth, she being one of only three from UBC women's field hockey to have played in the Olympics. Not only has she proved to be the prominent BC representative on Canada's National team, which she co-captained or captained her last four years, but at the 1986 Wembley Match in which Canada defeated England, she was awarded the Pollard trophy as the outstanding player of the match. The year previous, as Canada's co-captain she was chosen to go to Paris to receive the "International Fair Play Award" awarded to Canada by the United Nations that year.
Well into the 2000s she was still playing club hockey in Victoria, where she had been a league All-Star every year since 1976 and five times selected the league's outstanding player. Shelley is an inductee in the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame and in 2015 was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
If Winter Andrews' field hockey accomplishments weren't enough, the complimentary comments and recollections heard regarding Shelley can best be summed in the words of UBC field hockey Hall of Famer Charlotte Warren; "Shelley is a first rate person, an excellent athlete with a consistently great attitude."
Researched and written by Fred Hume, UBC Athletics Historian
