As an athlete at Sultan High School, Jolene Steen favored soccer, basketball and softball. She knew little about hockey, and certainly never figured to fall in love with a game involving ice skates, sticks and a little black puck.
But one night years later, wearing borrowed equipment, she practiced with the Everett Ravens womens hockey team.
The next week, she said, I went out and bought all my own gear. And Ive been hooked ever since.
How hooked? Well, the 32-year-old Steen, who still lives in Sultan and works as a medical assistant, is an Everett Silvertips season-ticket holder. She is also an avid follower of hockey on television and a three-year veteran defenseman with the Ravens.
My husband tells me Im a hockey fanatic, she confessed with a laugh. For me, hockey was a new challenge, and once I started playing, I was absolutely addicted. Between playing and watching, I just absolutely fell in love with it.
So, too, did 37-year-old Lisa Madary of Mill Creek, who showed up at her first Ravens practice knowing almost nothing about the game. Including, she admitted with a smile, how to stop on skates. Id slam into the boards every time, she said.
Unbothered by her bruises, Madary also became a full-fledged hockey buff. It is, she said, unlike any sport Ive ever done in my life. The speed is highly addicting. (Being on skates) is the fastest a human being can go on two feet.
Though traditionally a male sport, womens hockey is growing in popularity and players. New England and the upper Midwest are the hotbeds, but the womens game is also gaining a foothold elsewhere, including the Pacific Northwest.
In Snohomish County, a lot of that has to do with the Silvertips. The Western Hockey League team is hugely popular among a cross-section of fans, including a good many women, and three years ago some of them helped start the Ravens.
Players like Steen and Madary showed up as beginners, while others had previous hockey experience. Wendy Houston of Mukilteo, a 34-year-old mathematics teacher at Everett Community College, grew up in Michigan and played collegiate hockey at Bowdoin College in Maine. She joined the Ravens in January.
For me, the skating is the best part of it, Houston said. I just love to put on skates. I could skate all day, but I also like the combination of speed and finesse and power.
All the women seem bemused by the way friends react to their hockey passion. Some are intrigued, some are astonished, and some simply do not understand.
My students, Houston said, just think its the craziest thing theyve ever heard.
Others are more receptive. Once they see us play, Steen said, there have been a few women who said, Hey, I could do that. And then theyve joined our team.
Womens hockey is not exactly the same game played by men. According to John Kooy, the Ravens second-year head coach, women generally do not skate as fast as men, nor do they shoot as hard. Also, the womens game does not allow fighting and checking, although collisions and bumping inevitably occur.
Just because theres no fighting and no checking, that doesnt mean theres no contact, Steen said. Theres definitely contact. Part of defense is getting physical and keeping people out from in front of the net. … And Im kind of a physical player.
Some of these gals are big and tough, and theyre not afraid to go in there and rough it up, thats for sure, Kooy said.
The Ravens are not part of an official league, but will still play upwards of 20 games this season. They participate in tournaments, such as this weekends Fools on Ice event in Snohomish County, as well as games against womens teams, coed teams, and even some mens teams.
Were easy, Steen said. Well play anybody who wants to play us.
As much fun as the game is to play, there are other reasons for women to enjoy hockey, Steen said. For one, she said, there are the friendships.
Ive met some amazing women from hockey, she said. Some great friends.
For another, the exercise. Vigorous skating is extremely demanding, Madary said. Ive lost 20 pounds playing this sport. And from the time I started playing to now, Im in such better shape than I ever was.
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