Growing the Game: A Passion and Commitment

It was a late Sunday morning at the rink, just like many others that have been spent at an ice rink for the past seven years of my life. This time, I was watching something that had me beaming with joy as I took it in, something that gave me hope for the future of girls’ hockey in Ann Arbor Amatuer Hockey Association and in Michigan in general.

Today was the first of three clinics set apart just for girls and we had at least twenty girls under the age of fourteen on the ice. Helping them were coaches from all across the program. One coach was originally a Midget coach for boys who had recently taken charge of the girls under-10 team and the clinics in hopes to grow the girls game. Another, was the coach of our girls under-16 team who recently became our first girls team to compete in the USA Hockey National Tournament, finishing fifth in the nation and first in the state. Also on the ice were girls from the under-16 state championship team and girls from the University of Michigan ACHA Division 1 women’s team.

What could possibly bring all these people together?

The desire to grow the game of girls hockey.

The commitment to the growth of girls hockey by the individuals on the ice and in the office upstairs making it all logistically possible, is a breath of fresh air. You see, girls hockey has been on the decline in Michigan the past few years. Out of 44,000 members of MAHA, only 4,000 are girls, and as you age up, the numbers grow slimmer and slimmer, by the time you get to the under-19 division, there are only four teams in the entire state that compete at the tier two level.

What drives girls away from hockey in general? The general perception is that hockey is for boys, hockey is too rough, it isn’t a stereotypical sport for girls to play.

This, however, has drastically changed in the past twenty five years. Twenty five years ago, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) introduced women’s hockey as a World Championship event. Eight years later, it was introduced as an Olympic sport in the 1998 Nagano Olympics, where USA captured the first gold medal in the event’s history. Since then, associations across North America have been offering girls hockey teams and more girls have been playing than ever before.

Now, we have a new generation of players, a generation who weren’t even born when the United States captured the first ever Women’s Hockey Olympic Gold. This generation of players are being inspired by Hilary Knight, who was inspired by Olympic captain Cammi Granato in the 1998 Olympics. To see this process unfold before your eyes is nothing short of amazing.

This new generation of players provides hope for the future of girls’ hockey. The majority of the girls playing hockey are under the age of twelve or fourteen, which poses a problem to the older girls, specifically those who are over sixteen and do not live in an area where high school hockey is offered for girls.

I’ve been playing hockey for three and a half years, only one of those seasons was spent playing competitively due to the fact that my birthdate is four days too early to be under-16 this season. If it weren’t for Ann Arbor Coach Brian Gibson and his wife Pam, I would’ve ended up like the hundreds of other girls across the state and across the country. There are simply not enough girls at the under nineteen level especially to form teams and leagues across the state and the country.

This past year, I spent the spring and fall seasons skating with the Ann Arbor under-16 team as a student coach. These girls are phenomenal athletes and the lessons they are taught on and off the ice are exceptional. This team of girls is the best group of under sixteen players in the entire state of Michigan yet they may not be able to form a team in two years because of the lack of numbers.

This simply isn’t fair. Michigan Amateur Hockey Association boasts that their numbers are growing at the bottom, yet they fail to bring attention to the fact that their numbers at the top are shrinking at an alarming rate. In order to play under-19 hockey, I would have to drive to Rochester Hills, St. Clair Shores, Grand Rapids, Westland, or Marquette. That’s a problem.

One way to fix this problem is to change the rostering age requirements. In boys hockey, the oldest age division is under-18, but in girls the oldest is under-19. It may not seem like it would make a difference, but many parents do not want their sixteen year old daughter playing against nineteen year old girls who are practically adults. Once their daughters age out of under-16, many parents don’t want their daughters playing under-19. The truth, however, is that there are very few 19 year olds playing under-19 hockey, especially at the travel level. If a player is exceptionally talented, she’s going to be playing college hockey, either club or varsity, at age nineteen, not playing tier two in her home state.

The solution to this problem, however, requires quite a process that nobody has had time to begin. USA Hockey is the governing body for rostering requirements, changes cannot be made at the state level to the rostering ages. Michigan’s girls’ director Jean Laxton reported at the MAHA Winter Meeting that she put the idea in the heads of other girls’ directors across the country at the USA Hockey Winter Meeting but they didn’t have time to take the appropriate actions (writing a proposal) required to get the rule passed by the July Summer Meeting. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls across Michigan and the United States are forced to hang up their skates while they await the decision of the girls directors across the United States to write the proposal to get this rule passed and put into place so they can play their senior year of hockey.

As one of those girls whose hockey career is in someone else’s hands, I can tell you that it’s a helpless feeling to know that the decisions of complete strangers will affect your hockey career.

We need people that will be proactive in their positions who want to make a difference and have a passion to grow the game that those coaches who are willing to take time out of their weekends to coach the future of girls hockey in Michigan have. We need people who will fight tooth and nail to save girls’ hockey and make it flourish in Michigan and across the country. What we need are more Brian and Pam Gibson’s who are devoted to not just getting girls on the ice but keeping them there no matter what their age. These are the kinds of people we need on the board of MAHA, of Mid-Am, of USA Hockey, and even of the IIHF.

As I sit here writing this, the third session of AAAHA’s girls clinics is happening just through the window and we have yet another stellar turnout. This time, we have not only girls out there helping, but boys from our Midget program as well. What these coaches are doing out on the ice isn’t so they can be applauded for their aid of growing the game, but because they have a passion, a commitment to growing the game of girls hockey. And for that, I thank them and applaud them because without them, we wouldn’t have the girls’ program we have today.