Column | Being a female hockey player in a male-dominated sport

Photo Courtesy of Riley Wood

Most people play a sport at some point in their lives. Whether it's the soccer team in first grade, because all their friends joined, or in high school and college to continue the drive and passion they've already poured into a sport. My version of this is a bit different, but my experience has taught me an incredible amount along the way. 

I have always taken inspiration from my older brother, Dominic. When I was 10 years old, I watched him start his journey playing ice hockey, something that would eventually take him to play nationwide and farther. From the first time he laced up his skates, only to fall face first onto the ice, to seeing him fly from each end of the ice with the same excitement he had that first day, I was captivated by the sport.

Growing up, Dominic was the person I looked up to and one day wanted to be just like. When he started playing hockey and my mom enrolled me in figure skating, I knew something felt off. I knew I wanted to get into the same gear my brother wore and take my shot at playing such an intense sport. 

At the time, I lived in the​ Tampa Bay, Florida area and did not have an option to play on a team with girls like me. However, I was not deterred, and my competitive spirit against my brother enabled my confidence to jump in and play with the boys. I played about five seasons of youth hockey skating with my brother and other young kids until my mom told us we were moving to New York when I was 13. New York would offer us a better education, and my brother had made an accomplished team on the island. Also, there was finally a solid all-girls team I could play for, The New York Islanders Elite. A team was built in conjunction with The New York Islanders in the NHL.

In my time playing in Florida, I got to play two seasons with an all-girls team playing lower-level boys teams, but this would be my first chance to play against higher-level female travel teams while on an all-female team. I had yet to face the competition, but this environment pushed me harder than I imagined.

My coach, Alexis Moed, played Division I ice hockey for Boston College. At the time, she was the general manager of the Connecticut Whale, a team in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), now known as the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). Moed was an incredible guide in my development across all aspects of the sport and drove me to be a player I never thought I could be.

Once I got to high school, in New York, I decided to try out for my high school's all-boys hockey team. Since I hadn't played with guys since living in Florida, I was nervous, but I made the team. I knew a couple of the kids on the team from class, but this was the most significant adjustment I had to make in my time playing hockey. 

A lot of the guys did not want to play on the same team as me or even speak to me. At first, I only had a handful of teammates to talk to. This was an adversity I had never faced while playing with Islanders Elite. For the first time, I felt like I was the odd one out. Besides support from my family and specific teammates, the father of my goalie always kept my spirits up. Each game, I could hear him cheering me on from the stands, and he would always tell me how badass it was that I could keep up with the boys. This external support and recognition meant a lot and ultimately helped me continue playing, even though sometimes I felt like I could not or should not. I ended up meeting his daughter during my senior year of high school and have kept up with the family to this day.

On the ice, players on the other teams would yell disgusting sexual comments at me, illegally check and target me and leave disturbing comments in the chat of the live broadcasts of the games.

I had an experience with our defense coach in my junior year, who was not fairly rotating our players throughout the game. In hockey, two defensive players are on the ice at a time. When you have an odd amount of defensive players on a team, you have a rotation where each player will sit out a shift. However, my coach kept sitting me instead of the guys when I should've gone back out. This confused me, and I asked my coach if I had been playing badly or done something wrong, to which he answered no. Then, I asked why I had been sitting for my teammate's shifts, and his expression went blank. No words came out of his mouth. For the rest of the game, I was rotated fairly through and realized it was not just my teammates who thought less of me.

This is an occurrence that is, unfortunately, common for many women like me. According to a report published by Women in Sport, which explored the depths of sexism in sports, “in high school, girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play sports than boys.” The report also noted that parents believe playing a sport is more important for their sons rather than daughters, and that only half of girls aged five to 11 play sports where that percentage is at 70% for boys. The system is set up to benefit men over women.

Going into my senior year, I received a call from the head coach telling me that he feared I would be at risk of getting hurt if I were to play with the team in the next varsity season. He explained that full-grown men were playing high-level competitive hockey outside our league and it could be a risk for me. I could understand how that made sense, but I didn't get how it only related to me when smaller, less experienced guys on my team did not receive a phone call. I expressed my sadness and concerns about his choices, and a week later, he called to offer me a spot on the team. I respectfully declined. 

Although I never entirely found my place within my high school's hockey team, I was shaped by those experiences and am more resilient because of them today. It taught me to stand up for myself when no one else would and not to let arrogant comments bring me down. I deserved to be there just as much as everyone else.

I am forever grateful for each experience I had with ice hockey and I hope that other young women in male-dominated sports know that there is a place for them, and no one can tell them differently.