The weekend remembers one of the finest women to be involved in Canberra hockey, in particular the United Hockey Club. Chris was a laugh, always up for a wine, a chardonnay, filled to the brim, she gave true meaning to the word meniscus; a woman who called a spade a spade; and raised a family of fine hockey players, indeed was a handy player herself in her day.

Chris passed away from breast cancer in January 2013 and later that year the hockey community came together for a fundraising weekend. Since 2013 more than $63,500 has been raised for the National Breast Cancer Foundation from raffles and donations. A weekend where the hockey community is a community on and off the field.

Thel didn't have to work hard to convince me to be an official part of the weekend. A quick chat while we were playing against each other a few weeks ago. (I once had a coach berate me for chatting to Thel on the field - he didn't like my answer of 'I'm not chatting, I'm distracting her'.)

Can you talk about women in sport, she said, the pros of it, talk about the camaraderie, how it provides a support network, how it has physical and mental health benefits?

Yes Thel, yes I can.

I've written much over the years about elite women's sport. About the AFLW, about our gold-medal winning Rugby 7s teams, about the Hockeyroos.

But what I want to talk about here is the rest of us. Women like you and me. Middle-aged women, some well past that, some approaching that, who every season wonder whether we'll fit into our skirts, wonder whether we'll find time, among the school run, and our own children's sporting commitments, to find some time for ourselves. Time to pick up a stick, or kick a ball, or throw a pass.

Ask yourself why it is you still play sport? There's the answers to all of Thel's questions right there.

For me, it's about being me. Having a few hours each week, where I am just Karen Hardy, under-rated strike forward. I am not someone's mother, I am not someone's partner, or a journalist, or a home-maker. I am nothing but a part of a team and the rest of it doesn't matter.

Well that's a lie, because the best teams actually care about each other, deeply. Much has been said about the camaraderie and mateship that men's teams exhibit. Mainly by people who haven't spent a lot of time around women's teams. Hell hath no fury like a bunch of 40-year-old women with each other's backs.

An example, we had a player in our club this year, her first season back after a long break, a break that included a couple of children, mental health battles. She won't mind me using her story, because she knows I have her back. She was struggling in the team she was in, one full of young up and comers on their way to the top grades. She was thinking of quitting. I said to her come and play with us, it will mean you'll have to drop a grade, and I was honest about the problems our own team had. We have people struggling hard with broken marriages, with health issues, with self-confidence. And that's just me. You need to be in a place, I told her, surrounded by women who know what you're going through. The hockey is secondary, you'll find your love for that again. That's the easy part.

I read a story during the week about how the Matilda's, our national women's soccer team, is blooding seven uncapped teenagers at a camp at the AIS here next week. It was an interview with former player Joey Peters, who made her debut at 17, and then was forced to retire early due to major knee injuries.

She said she didn't feel there was a place for teenagers at the highest level of soccer, that we should leave them be, for the most part, til they hit their 20s, so we can get more out of them when "they've developed personally, physically, and have some life experience under their belt".

At times, usually when some 12 year old scoots around me, I think we're suffering from the same thing in hockey. I watch our junior girls play two junior games, and then back up for a couple of women's matches, throw in a few rep trainings. I watch them cry in dug outs, I listen to their fathers goad them from the sidelines, just last weekend I watched as one stormed off the field and threw her stick because an umpire dare award a penalty corner against her.

I wonder if it's all too much for them. I wonder if they'll burn out and give hockey away before they get to our age.

Because I want them to still be playing when they're our age. So they understand what sport is actually all about. It has nothing to do with what grade you're playing or whether you've made a rep team or whether you can drag flick.

The last year I coached my own daughter's team, it was under 11s I think, on the final training night of the season I took them all over to the Old Canberra Inn for a jug of lemonade or two.

Girls, I said, the most important thing you'll ever get from hockey, indeed from any team sport you play, are moments like this. Moments where after a game, you're hanging with your girlfriends, women who might not be in your life for any other reason than the chance that you happened to turn up to the same club grading day, and you realise that these women make a difference to your life every day.

I'd like to think that if Chris MacKinnon was there that day, she would have come over to join us for a lemonade, because I know that's how she felt about it all too.