How Kao Lawrie Built the Inclusive Hockey Tournament They Never Had
What began as a small idea has grown into This Tournament Has Everything, a community-driven event reshaping who hockey is for and who gets to feel at home in the sport.
Kao Lawrie's relationship with hockey started the way it does for a lot of kids, informally, playing with friends, figuring out the sport on their own terms. But when it came time to find a more structured path into the game, the options weren't always there. There was no girls' team available when they were young, which made it harder to keep playing consistently. Later, when they did find a team, the environment wasn't always easy to navigate. Locker rooms, in particular, were spaces where Kao didn't always feel comfortable, and over time, their involvement in the sport began to fade.
Check out the full conversation with Kao Lawrie now on YouTube.
That started to change when they moved to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. They joined a local team, found teammates who were genuinely welcoming, and began to reconnect with a sport they had always cared about. It was a meaningful shift, but it came with a new kind of awareness. Kao identifies as trans non-binary, and the more they played, the more they noticed how few players around them shared their experience. It wasn't just about visibility, though that mattered too. It was about whether spaces in hockey had ever been built with people like them in mind. As far as they could tell, they largely hadn't.
So Kao decided to create one.
Creating Something That Did Not Exist Yet
The concept behind This Tournament Has Everything was straightforward in the best possible way. Kao wanted to organize a tournament specifically for women, trans, two-spirit, and non-binary players, a weekend where people could come together, play hockey, and not have to wonder whether they belonged there. “A space where people could come together and feel seen and celebrated,” as Kao described it.
Getting the first event off the ground turned out to be more complicated than anticipated, and not for reasons anyone could have predicted. The Sunshine Coast is a boat-access community, which already makes logistics more involved than most places. The local rink also depends on the region's water supply, and when a severe drought extended well beyond anyone's expectations, there simply wasn't enough water to maintain the ice. The tournament had to be postponed. It was a frustrating setback for an event that hadn't even happened yet, but Kao pushed through it, and when the tournament finally took place months later, around 15 to 20 players showed up. Most were from nearby communities, but some had travelled specifically to be part of it, which said something even then about the demand for a space like this.
A Tournament That Continued to Grow
That first event was modest, but it was real, and it kept growing. Five years later, This Tournament Has Everything draws more than 120 players to that same single-rink facility on the Sunshine Coast, with participants travelling from across Canada, the United States, and in some cases from overseas. For a lot of those players, it is the first tournament they have ever competed in that was designed specifically for them, not as an afterthought or an accommodation, but as the entire point.
The tournament takes place over a single weekend, with all games held in the same arena. That shared setting matters. It gives players from completely different parts of the world the chance to meet, spend time together, and experience something that most of them have never had access to before.
A Grassroots Effort That Continues to Expand
What makes this tournament's growth even more significant is how it happened. This wasn’t a league initiative or a program funded by a governing body. Kao organized it independently, starting from scratch and building it year by year through word of mouth and a genuine need that the sport had never properly addressed. “Hockey is for everyone,” Kao said, and This Tournament Has Everything exists as a direct expression of that belief, proof that when the existing structures don’t reflect that, someone can decide to build something that does.
“This is where the change starts,” Kao said.
With the next tournament coming up in early March, the story Kao shared in this episode feels timely. It’s a reminder of what grassroots efforts can actually accomplish, and of how much it matters when someone decides that the absence of a space isn’t a reason to give up on a sport, but a reason to create something new.
You can find This Tournament Has Everything on Instagram at @tthehockeytournament
Check out the full conversation with Kao Lawrie now on YouTube.