This Page About Girls hockey looks likely to hit the ice here soon

Girls hockey looks likely to hit the ice here soon

They played on boys teams in high school, and although they more than held their own and benefited from the experience, both Lyndsay Wall and Kim Insalaco wished there had been girls-only ice hockey teams at their respective schools back in the day.

"That would have been so cool," said Insalaco, a Greece Athena graduate who will be on the ice with Wall, a Churchville-Chili alum, when the U.S. women's national team hosts Finland in a pre-Olympic exhibition game at the Blue Cross Arena tonight.

"I definitely think it's something girls in the Rochester area are going to be able to experience in the future."

Perhaps sooner than you think.

Scott Barker, the Pittsford athletic director and president of the Monroe County Hockey League, says local schools already are exploring the possibility.

"It's definitely on our radar screen," he said. "We don't have a definitive plan yet. But we are collecting data. I think it's more a question of when, not if, given the tremendous growth in the popularity of girls hockey."

Gini Weslowski, co-director of Webster Girls Hockey, recently surveyed female youth hockey players and high school athletic directors across the state. The respondents overwhelmingly supported making girls' ice hockey an interscholastic sport like it is in Minnesota, Massachusetts and Michigan.

Weslowski also discovered that eight New York school districts, including Ithaca, already are fielding girls' teams.

"(Ithaca coach) Mary Granger said that when they started their program, they were floored by the numbers," Weslowski said. "They had girls coming out of the woodwork to sign up. I think the same thing would happen here, given the growing number of girls playing hockey in Rochester."

Weslowski believes several local schools could send club teams onto the ice as soon as next year.

"We have to see what the best approach is," she said. "Perhaps, we start out by combining teams from different towns. We want to make sure we do it right. We need to show the districts there are enough girls participating in youth leagues to not only launch these programs, but to sustain them."

According to figures from USA Hockey, the number of girls competing in youth leagues nationally has risen from 6,336 in 1990 to 51,275 last year. That's an eight-fold increase. During that same span, the number of New York participants has jumped from 786 to 4,025, leaving the Empire State behind only Minnesota (9,443), Massachusetts (6,916) and Michigan (4,297). Though figures for Rochester are sketchy, it's estimated that about 400 girls from our area currently are playing for youth-league teams.

"I believe we are on the verge of becoming a hotbed, just like Minnesota and Massachusetts," said Ray Maluta, the former Rochester Americans player who now serves as general manager of the ESL Centre on the Monroe Community College campus.

"I got involved when my daughter started playing several years ago, and you wouldn't believe not only the dramatic increase in the number of girls now playing, but in their skill level. These girls can really play." There are several factors behind the upswing. The addition of women's ice hockey at colleges throughout the Northeast and Midwest has resulted in a significant increase in the number of athletic scholarships.

Plus, the success of the U.S. women's team in international competitions such as the Olympics has prompted more media exposure, thereby encouraging more girls to follow in the skate grooves of young women such as Wall and Insalaco.

"Before, girls interested in hockey only had male role models," said Maluta's daughter, Andrea, a junior wing on the Clarkson University women's team. "Now, they can go to games like the one (tonight) and see female hockey players performing at a high level. They can aspire to become the next Lyndsay or Kim."

Andrea has seen a big transformation in the perception of women's hockey in her short time at her North Country college. During her freshman season, she and her teammates often played games in front of a handful of relatives and friends. Contrast that with a game over the weekend against nearby rival St. Lawrence that attracted a rowdy crowd of more than 2,000 spectators.

"It was a fantastic experience," she said. "And it carried over into the following days. I had professors and students talking to me about the game. That didn't happen before."

Maluta saw the galvanizing effect her team had on campus. It's something she didn't experience as an athlete at Spencerport High School because there wasn't a girls hockey program there.

"I think there were me and another girl at school who played hockey at the time, and I'm sure it was that way at most schools," she said.

"There was a negative stereotype back then when you told people you played hockey. They would look at you funny and kind of wonder about your femininity."

Maluta opted to play travel hockey for the Rochester Edge, an all-girls team, rather than go out for the boys varsity.

"That was fun and beneficial as far as getting exposure for a college scholarship," she said of her days with the Edge. "But it wasn't the same as having a school team to play for the way girls in other sports like basketball and soccer had."

But that could be changing for the next generation of hockey-playing girls.

"I have a dream that my 12-year-old daughter (Angelika) gets a chance to experience what it's like to play varsity ice hockey on an all-girls team before she graduates," Weslowski said. "I believe that's going to become a reality." Continue to learn more about Ice hockey, please visit Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

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