As the U.S. women’s hockey team continued to establish itself as an international power at the Turin Olympics, hopes and dreams of girls across America undoubtedly were born.
“I’m excited about the Olympics, and I definitely like that girls hockey has become more competitive,” McKenzie Stevens, a sophomore at Battle Mountain High School, said before the Americans beat Finland to win the bronze medal.
Since the United States defeated Canada 3-1 at the 1998 Winter Games to earn the first Olympic gold medal awarded in women’s ice hockey, the number of female players registered with USA Hockey has nearly doubled.
In Colorado the growth has nearly tripled, climbing from 619 girls registered with the national governing body during the 1997-98 season to 1,760 in 2004-05. Colorado ranked eighth nationally among the 51,275 girls registered that season.
“Women’s hockey is growing faster in this state than any state in the union,” said University of Denver men’s hockey coach George Gwozdecky, whose 12-year-old daughter, Adrienne, plays on a Colorado Select team. “Every year you’re seeing more and more girls playing and more ice time set aside for girls hockey.”
The Colorado Select Girls Hockey Association, the only girls hockey association in the state, fielded its first team in 2000-01 with about 15 players. Today, the association has 14 teams with more than 225 girls participating.
“When we first started we thought maybe we would have a couple of teams,” Select president Dan Minnick said, “but once we offered all the teams to girls they just came out of the woodwork.”
Because Colorado Select has enjoyed such rapid growth, the organization has scaled back advertising to attract new players for its tryouts, or “test drives.”
“We try not to have girls come in and then have to tell them they can’t play,” Minnick said. “So we try to minimize the number of girls we get interested.
“If we totally opened it up we’d turn away tons.”
Despite the growth, Colorado has no plans to add girls hockey to the high school sports schedule. In 1994, Minnesota became the first state to sanction girls hockey as a varsity high school sport.
“A formal proposal hasn’t come to the table, so there hasn’t been a discussion by the ice hockey committee,” said Rhonda Blanford-Green of the Colorado High School Activities Association. “Some of the challenges here for our school districts are how much ice is available, coaching and whether or not there is statewide interest.”
Blanford-Green said the earliest possible season to add girls hockey would be 2007-08. The state will field new boys teams at Ralston Valley, Standley Lake, Columbine, Chatfield and Dakota Ridge starting in 2006-07, bringing the total of teams to 25.
For aspiring young players, the options remain the same: join a club team or join the boys on the high school team. And for some, such as Stevens, both options are viable.
“I definitely think playing with new guys at first they don’t know how to act around me,” said the defenseman, who also plays for a Select under-19 team. “But after a while, it doesn’t matter. We’re all just friends.”
At the college level, there are 76 women’s teams competing in Division I, II and III. Two-time defending NCAA men’s champion DU does not have a women’s team.
“It’s costly,” DU athletic director Peg Bradley-Doppes said. “We could make it work if all of our other programs were funded – if we were going to add another sport on the men’s side. But the dynamics are that it would then reduce significantly our youth hockey and community use of our two sheets of ice. … There is a lot to (benefit) having the public use our facilities.”
Despite the hurdles, Colorado girls are taking to the ice.
After dedicating most of her childhood to figure skating, Gretel Reich, a graduate of Cheyenne Mountain High School, turned to ice hockey at 15.
And, given her skating skills already were intact, Reich progressed rapidly. She refined her hockey skills with club teams before going on to make the women’s team at Niagara. There, Reich made it to the second women’s Frozen Four before losing to eventual two- time champion Minnesota-Duluth in the 2002 semifinals.
“There were only two teams when I was playing and now there’s so many,” Reich said of the sport’s growth in Colorado. “The skill level every year has gotten better and better.
“It’s just going to keep growing, especially if they could get girls hockey in high school and college. Because then little girls will see it and they’ll want to start.”
For now, Colorado’s talented players have to go elsewhere to play collegiately.
“We’d like to see our daughter be able to continue the sport, if she wants,” Gwozdecky said. “By the time she’s ready to go to college, she’s already threatened me if DU doesn’t have a women’s team, she’s going to go to Minnesota.”
Staff writer Mike Chambers and freelancer Brady Delander contributed to this report.
Allen Daniel can be reached at 303-820-1892 or adaniel@denverpost.com.
