Hockey, Hockey, Hockey!

I’ve entered a new Chapter of my life that I never saw coming but ain’t mad about - HOCKEY AS LIFE.

I was a middling player racking up interesting hockey life experiences (from street hockey with friends to playing on a roller team at a YMCA strip mall rink wide enough for only 3v3, to being one of or The only female player in the full-check HS and College leagues I played in, to playing roller in Italy and ice in New Zealand) from about ages 10-26, and it was almost always to some varying degree a part of my life, but Travels happened and Priorities shifted (along with a butt splinter incident that is still remembered locally a decade later, and a broken skate without a pathway to replace), leaving most of my last 15 years mostly without hockey being part of them.

Then the new local ice rink opened, an upgrade from the quaint but unreliable and unsheltered outdoor one; a Town project 26 years in the making.

Then I attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for this new rink with Luc Robitaille presiding, did a clinic led by another former NHLer, and met Manon Rheaume, the only female to have ever played in an NHL game (which I remembered reading about at age 10, 30+ years ago). I bumbled my way back into Rec/Beer League and onto a team of (largely, if not entirely) high-octane players, and then my friend Sydney held a Women’s Intro to Hockey clinic, asked if I - as one of the other 4 females in the 120-player Beer League - wanted to help her coach which I declined, being incredibly rusty from my long hiatus, and opted to attend as a participant instead. Then 45 women showed up. Syd offered another one, and another 45 signed up. She said she’d have to cap it if I couldn’t help coach. So I helped coach.

Having no idea how. Having never entertained the notion, let alone now after 15 years mostly away from the sport.

Then the women kept wanting more. They kept showing up, and started acquiring gear, and getting better. They were Passionate about the sport, in a way maybe I had been when I first started on ice my senior year of HS, and it felt like Hockey was Life.

In a way I’d forgotten feeling, because there had been no Community with which to stoke it, for decades.

In a way that I realized <I> could help build and foster and stoke it, now. For them, certainly. But as we coalesced into more than just strangers bonking around on the ice trying to figure out what we were doing, them as new players, me and Syd as new coaches, we started coalescing into a Community.

Mammoth Lakes Women’s Hockey.

Something new, something never before seen. Something Alive.

I took the seasonal summer layoff from the Mountain to spend my most coveted months of the year to Enjoy the gems of this beautiful town we live in, from lakes to the mountain bike trails, and to work on my nascent Business (born the same day as our big Women’s Exhibition Game that the town went WILD for!), and to reflect on the future and what I wanted my future work to look like.

And I opted for more time at the Rink. More time to develop the programs on offer, my Women’s Program, and whatever else I could Contribute at the rink, and to the town. I brought my ideas to Syd and then to Andrew, and asked if they thought they were sound ideas, and if we could find a way for me to support myself working for the rink and town as I build them out.

Brian and I got processed in just in time for my free Reffing/Coaching Certification clinic in LA offered free for women by the LA Kings (I’d never have done it otherwise) in August, and in late Sept we got asked if we were available for “making the ice”, a term that entirely belied what an incredible experience we were about to have, and a process I am forever grateful to have gotten to witness and be a part of, especially for my now most-beloved rink.

And then there was the October 3rd Winter Expo, and all of a sudden the rink was Open, and I had a Work Schedule rolling in, and not only was there Women’s programming but a whole new league that didn’t exist last year but now there was demand and need for - a Beginner’s league, appropriate for Beginner-Intermediate players. A place where men could also come in new to the game, and begin to Learn the skills, skating, puck handling, strategies, positions, rules, and practice and play with them, alongside my Women who bravely continued on from “Learn to” clinics and goalie-less, score- and ref-less women’s scrimmages, to recreational Coed league play. And so I got to join a team not only with Brian, but alongside my Women too, to help them, encourage them, and keep developing their understanding of the game.

And I was made a general Skating instructor too (emphasis on hockey, but early skills are all pretty similar), and the Sole or Head coach for clinics, not just for Women or Beginners, but for the A-leaguers too.

And suddenly Hockey was Life.

I started learning to drive Zamboni. I learned to keep score, and run the music. I watched the games from the ref’s perspective as much as the player’s. I played in my own league games as both a Captain and a Coach. I went with the whole fam on a dime to San Jose just overnight to see the Women’s Team USA face off against Canada in Game 1 of the 24-25 Rivalry Series - driving 7.5 hrs the morning after my Tues night game for the game, and 7.5 hrs back the next day to get home in time for the first session of the first Women’s 6-week clinic of the year. We watched the fantastic 6 30-min episodes docuseries Defending Their Ice in 2 days to prepare for the game, and I spent the ride to the game charting out all of Team USA and Team Canada’s players, and preparing to know and care about Professional or Women’s sports for the first time in my life with this year’s PWHL season, because now I - the whole fam - were IN, invested, knew the players’ individual stories, and were jumping in to the new and developing saga while still at relative ground level, while things are still in process of forming, and Beginning. I missed last season for not paying attention (or caring; who knows what will stick - nothing came of Women being in the NHL even for Manon’s feat in 1992, for the past 30 years), but this one is different. Now they have Names. Now they have Jerseys, and are selling out major arenas.

Now people are paying attention. And Care. And it might Matter. It DOES matter - I faced off in a game this season for the first time, with 3 girls standing as the forwards in the faceoff line on a coed league. 30 years since I started, and that had Never happened.

Now it’s happening. So I will stoke it, and foster it, and build it, and participate in it, and Celebrate it, in every way I can and every way that comes my way as an opportunity. I will spend my “free” time watching Coaching Vids, Skating Vids, Stickhandling Vids, Strategy Vids, Positioning Vids, Reffing vids, Goalie Vids, to try to help my players. I will find Tournaments and reach out and meet and shake hands with other rinks, and other Women’s and Beginners programs. I will think about little other than Hockey, Hockey, Hockey now, to do my part to use this intriguing, fun, fascinating sport, to help create and foster this new and budding community, and to help build it into something Beautiful.

Because I’ve entered a new Chapter of my life that I never saw coming but ain’t mad about - HOCKEY AS LIFE. :)