Why Girl's Hockey Is the Best Sport Ever

By Christy Flom on February 23, 2015

Growing up, my claim to fame as being a hard-core athlete was making it through a two-week hockey camp in fifth grade competing against girls in the eighth grade because the elementary school camp had to be cancelled.

While I successfully finished the camp, the intimidation of the older girls on skates got the best of me, and I unfortunately made the historic decision to end my hockey career at the young and naïve age of 10.

However, my older sister continued to play hockey all the way through high school and eventually at the collegiate level in the NESCAC Division III conference. With an older sister playing ice hockey in college, I received a lot of questions about my hockey career when I reached high school.

image via BethelCT on flickr.com

“Did you ever play hockey like your older sister?” was an extremely common question. And I would reply with yes, I was the best skater of my age group but sadly I fell in love with the game of basketball and had to quit at an early age before my true potential was discovered.

This was partly true, I did end up liking basketball better than hockey, but hockey still remains the one sport I wish I had kept playing for a couple more years. Attending girls games I would get a kick out of how frequently fights would erupt on the ice and I personally think the more “catty” style of fighting girls tend to do is much more entertaining than watching two men box on skates.

When I say catty I do not mean to say girls were exempt from throwing punches because there were several girls my sister grew up playing with that could probably knock the sense out of anyone that got in their way.

When I talk to my friends about girl’s hockey, many times people think that there is no difference between a high school girl’s hockey team and a travel team. I’m here to say, that at least in the state of Michigan, high school hockey is similar to track.

Especially at my high school, if you could run you made the track team and if you could skate you made the hockey team. Travel team players were the ones who went on to play at the collegiate level and even for the women’s Olympic teams.

For all the dedication that female hockey players put into their sport, there are still a limited number of places for them to continue playing in college. Many schools have now added at least a women’s club hockey team to draw players to their school, but many colleges are without any type of female hockey team and a there is a large group of other schools that offer no scholarships for female players.

Compared to men’s collegiate hockey, there are 24 less Division I female hockey teams and 24 less Division II and III teams. Girl’s hockey at the collegiate level has drastically increased since my older sister first began playing for her travel team back in middle school, but there are countless schools that still refuse to sponsor the game as a varsity sport. Schools will cite a lack of funds or competing ice time with the men’s teams or lack of interest as various reasons to prevent implementing an official team for their school.

Girls from my sister’s travel team united at a summer camp before returning to their college teams. Image courtesy of Pamela Flom.

Using the University of Michigan as an example because I have several friends on the club team, they play other Big Ten club teams at some schools that have varsity teams, too. Ohio State University has both a varsity and club team but the difference in the level of play between these two teams is very noticeable.

Michigan’s club team has been trying to become a varsity sport for several years now but their inability to raise the sufficient funds necessary to support their team as a varsity sport is just one reason preventing them from making this jump.

This means, however, that many competitive club teams are forced to play against other less competitive teams because the best players go to their varsity teams on scholarship. I personally think it would just be easier to create more varsity teams to increase the competition level and be able to more easily market the teams to student fan bases.

Girl’s hockey is extremely entertaining to watch and in all honesty it makes me want to get out on the ice myself and learn how to take a slap shot and weave in and out of players with mad stick skills. While it is slightly disappointing that there is no checking allowed in girl’s hockey, this may be for the best.

Shakira was right in her song “My Hips Don’t Lie,” as some girls have some very hard hips that could do some serious damage if hip checking were allowed. On the other hand I think the players could take it so I’ll be starting a protest group for the NCAA as soon as I can to get officials to revise these outdated rules if anyone is interested (as a side note they could also take a look at the no contact rules in girl’s lacrosse and field hockey, too).

All in all, girl’s ice hockey is as intense and hardcore as it sounds. It takes severe dedication to keep playing a sport that forces you to carry around a bag that smells worse than a dumpster and the men’s locker room combined after games and practices.

Girl’s hockey is not for the faint of heart, but many athletes looking to take their athleticism to new levels should 100 percent try playing competitive female ice hockey. I wish I had tried playing it at a competitive level, but I guess I’ll settle for merely writing about it being a competitive and thrilling game instead.

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