Jones, Terry

BORN FEBRUARY 22ND 1953 , he played Senior B ice hockey for Blacktown Vikings and Canterbury Eagles between 1984 and 2001. His brother Greg won a Goodall Cup with New South Wales at the new outdoor rink at Prince Alfred Park in 1963, but it was coaching and the women's game on which he left his mark. Women's hockey here leap-frogged the First World War and burst into the Roaring Twenties in a shower of Moet & Chandon. The interstate competition between Victoria and New South Wales became an annual tradition like the Goodall Cup, but it was erased by the Great Depression and the Second World War. All around the globe, women did not start getting back into it in a big way until the mid-60s, and it was not until the '70s that they returned to the game in some Australian states.

In 1982, the year after his daughter was born, Canada held its first national championship for women’s ice hockey. Yet, when Canadian player-coach, Mark Sadgrove, arrived in Sydney in April that year, there was no league for women, and sixteen year-old goalie, Karen Somerville, faced a life ban from her state association for having played in a men's team in an age match. That year a women's team was formed by Chris Pett and Steve Green at the new Blacktown rink. Next season, the ACT's Mumma Bears was formed by a group of figure skaters. By 1984 a total of 60 women played ice hockey, 2 percent of all players, and by 1985 the game was played in 4 states. Despite this, a women's league planned for Australia's bicentenary in 1988 did not eventuate.

His son Morgan played hockey and his his daughter Ellen had finally convinced him she should also be allowed to play. She was the first female on a local boy's team of her time. In 1994, he created the state's first women's ice hockey league while his daughter Ellen was finishing up with the Peewees. Like the Junior league it involved Narrabeen, Blacktown, two teams each from Canterbury and Macquarie and Canberra. It was played on prime-time ice in winter and often before or after Super League games. It was the first ever women's ice hockey league in Australia and the leagues that followed in South Australia and Victoria turned the women’s game into a well-recognised sport in the 1990s.

In 1994, he assisted Jenny Dodd, Wendy Ovenden and Chris Pett establish the Able Press Cup without subsidy or even support from the state association. Instead the group fundraised the first tournament and even the ones that followed. The state team in which his daughter played at age 12 defeated Queensland to take out the inaugural Able Press Cup in 1994. It was basically "an ongoing State of Origin between New South Wales and Queensland", the predecessor to the national women's tournament in 1995 known as the Joan McKowen Trophy, the emblem of supremacy in Australian Women's ice hockey.

He and John Wilson, the father of Australian ice hockey champion, Anthony Wilson, also created the development league at Blacktown Ice Rink, providing a pathway for beginners to pick up the sport in full kits of rented gear. A safe haven with minimal outlays, it was a place where prospective new players could learn a little and get comfortable before joining the women's competition. By 1998, it consisted of under-14, under-16, under-18, and under-21 women's teams. Other 11 or 12 year-old girls like his daughter were also taking over the ice and developing well. The first Australian women's teams were open age limit, but 12 or 13 year-old players were common.

He was very successful with the women's teams at Canterbury and Blacktown between 1995 and 2000. He coached the Blacktown women's team to three consecutive state titles, 1998 to 2000. He coached the NSW State Women's Team to victory in the Nationals held in Victoria, and the National Women's Team in a Trans Tasman game against New Zealand. He was General Manager of the National Women's Team to IIHF Championships in Hungary and Slovenia.

He was the National Women's Development Director for three years in the mid-1990s. "This is really where I feel I achieved the most for the sport," he said in 2017. "When I took this role, there were only twenty-three registered female player's nationally. When I finished we had over three hundred players; we had attended two World Championships (C-pool); and we had both junior and senior development programmes in place. I guess I feel this is more my legacy than my player or coaching credentials."