Ice hockey programs for girls and women experience ‘a huge boom’

Story by: Macy Meyer

Video by: Edward Trentzsch

Photos by: Dana Gentry

Something magical happens when a young girl feels her skates glide across the ice. She’s in control, feeling the weight of the puck against her stick. She feels the perfect syncopation of hands, feet and mind; she is one with herself.

Out on the rink, she can be tough. She can play hard. She can be aggressive, graceful, agile — all at once. She can be whatever she wants to be. 

It doesn’t matter that the chill of the ice rink causes a rose flush across her cheeks or that she’ll have bruises on her knees from falling over and over again. There is just love of the game.

Girls and women across North Carolina have that love. 

For decades, ice hockey didn’t have a home in North Carolina. While the National Hockey League was first established in 1917 with Canadian and Northern U.S. teams, N.C. had to wait for an NHL team until 1997 when the Hartford Whalers relocated to Greensboro, and later to Raleigh, and established the Carolina Hurricanes. 

Among the hundreds of soccer programs and Little League baseball teams, ice hockey programs in the early 2000s were a rarity for young North Carolinians — especially for girls and young women.

But that’s changing. 

Now, a group of retired NWHL professional players, a $215,000 investment from the Carolina Hurricanes and hundreds of hockey supporters are part of a movement to make ice hockey accessible to girls and women of all ages across the state. 

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Alyssa Gagliardi was nervous about moving from Raleigh to Minnesota to attend Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Faribault, but that was the only way she could keep playing hockey. 

When the Pittsburgh-native moved to Raleigh at 10 years old, the first thing her father did was sign Alyssa and her older brother up to play ice hockey. She has always loved hockey. It didn’t matter that the only team available for Alyssa through Raleigh Youth Hockey Association was an all-boys team. 

“A high priority for (my parents) was finding a house and a hockey program,” Alyssa, now 29, said. 

She never really noticed being the only girl on the team. The following year, when her position was already filled, Alyssa moved up to play on the Under-16 women’s team. Alyssa was 11.

“I couldn’t stay on the boys side and there really were no girls’ opportunities,” Alyssa said. “It  was the only option.”

Moving North is a reality for many young Southern women who want to remain in hockey, especially for those who have aspirations to play in college or professionally. It’s a reality the Carolina Junior Hurricanes programs hope to change. 

“It’s pretty hard to say that if you want to continue playing the sport that you love, you have to go move to Connecticut or Massachusetts in ninth grade in order to make it anywhere,” said David Reaugh, program director for the Junior Canes Girls teams. “So it really kind of started a mission to eliminate that.”

Reaugh has personal experience. His daughter, Shelby, plays in Massachusetts on the Becker College women’s ice hockey team. His group’s goal is to spread collegiate and professional opportunities in N.C. to keep the talent in-state.

The mission to keep homegrown talent in N.C. is starting to come to fruition. 

In just three years, the program has grown from 90 travel players to almost 200. The Carolina Junior Hurricanes has teams at every level from U-6 to U-19, and three different teams for girls between 12 and 13 years old, Reaugh said. The adult Carolina Lady Hurricanes’ B and C teams clinched a spot at the 2021 USA Hockey Women’s National Championships.

“It’s been a huge boom,” Reaugh said. “Now we’re going through a little bit of growing pains, but at the same time, continuing to be more and more competitive, and providing more and more opportunity for girls in the area.”

Two years ago, with the help of expanded women’s programs, the first girls from Raleigh that stayed in N.C. from the beginning of their youth hockey career have made it to the collegiate level. 

And with the recent creation of the N.C. State University Women’s Hockey team, collegiate hockey is now a viable option in the state. 

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Emily Petersen spotted Coach Mike Gazzillo across the rink at a Canes youth practice. As a freshman at N.C. State, she had heard about the coach that turned the N.C. State men’s club hockey team into a championship-caliber team. 

Petersen grew up playing hockey in Raleigh and missed the consistent team experience, but when she introduced herself to Gazzillo, she had no idea that conversation would lead to the creation of a women’s team. Building off the success of the men’s team and garnering interest among the campus community, the women’s team began practicing in 2019 and officially started competitive games in spring 2021.  

“We have a wide range of skill with people who have played forever, and people who started last year,” Petersen said. “So it’s kind of like, there’s room for everyone on the team. And it’s just a matter of getting people out here and convincing them that they can play, too.”

Veronica Heyl grew up in Pennsylvania to a hockey-centric family with parents who were Pittsburgh Penguins season ticket holders. When she came to N.C. State for the engineering program, she assumed she wouldn’t play college hockey. That changed when she met Petersen.

“We’re hoping that more and more people will start coming here because they see, ‘Oh, there’s a good team, and it’s in the area, and it’s a good school,” Heyl said. “It was a little difficult to fill out the roster at first, but we have the bodies now. Some people are newer, but they’re learning.”

Madison Mueller is one of those new members. 

The Raleigh-native didn’t grow up playing, but with the support of the team, Mueller felt confident enough to give the unfamiliar sport a try. 

“This year, the ACC has expanded,” Mueller said. “And we’ve been seeing new teams in Virginia, and even some in North Carolina get added. So, we’re really excited about seeing the growth of women’s college teams in the South, and teams that are more at our level.”

The growth in collegiate women’s hockey in N.C. is a slow and steady progression. It takes years to develop skill to get to the level of being a competitive collegiate athlete, but the newly developed women’s teams don’t just want to be good for a Southern market team, they want to be good, period. 

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A palpable energy can be felt inside the Wake Competition Center on Saturday mornings. The girls grab their sticks from their parents’ hands and charge to the ice, only stopping briefly to take off their blade guards before feeling the chill rush of wind on the rink. 

It was week two of the Canes Girls Youth Hockey clinic, and a cacophony of sticks tapping the ice and pucks hitting the siding can be heard as dozens of young girls fall in love with the sport — exactly what retired professionals Gagliardi and Colleen Murphy hoped for when they retired from playing professional hockey in the NWHL to grow the sport in their home state. 

Gagliardi calls out to the girls to get into a straight line. They listen attentively as Gagliardi assigns them skating drills across the ice. Murphy and several members of the Lady Canes team demonstrate the moves. 

One by one the girls mimic their instructors and absorb information from the women who show them the possibility of a life as an ice hockey player.

Since becoming the Hurricanes girls’ and women’s hockey specialist, Gagliardi has led high-energy, skill-based weekly practices and lectures, off-ice training, and goal-setting activities for girls 6 to 12 years old across the Triangle. 

“In this market, we feel like we can offer pretty much equivalent to what any program in the country can offer to an extent,” Gagliardi said. “We’re hoping that we can offer a really premier option down here in Carolina. Any girl that just wants to get involved with the sport, I think they’ll find that there’s a really great community around here to do so.”

For a few hours every weekend, the clinic serves as a starting point for girls and their love of the game. 

“We’re at a spot in girls sports that we want to show them like, ‘Hey, you’re strong, you can do this, you don’t have to be pushed around by other people,’ and that, basically, if you want to do something, go do it,” Murphy said. “You shouldn’t have any obstacles in your way.”

“I think there’s really good potential right now to really put the investment into creating these programs,” she said. 

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Gloves, pads and skates litter the floor of the locker room in Wake Competition Center. Jerseys with “100% is not enough” written across the shoulder blades have been discarded along the floor. After a morning skate, the young women sit quietly in their stalls, eyes trained on the screen in front of them. 

Kelsey Koelzer, the first Black player to be selected first overall in the NWHL Draft and the first Black head ice hockey coach in NCAA history, is the special guest of the day. The Arcadia University head coach is video-calling from Philadelphia to give the team advice and guidance into the next stages of their hockey careers. 

The 25-year-old coach encourages the girls with big dreams to play professionally to reach for their goals, but also to understand the tumultuous path of a career in hockey: tough collegiate schedules, competitive team atmospheres, and the fact that hockey for women, even at the pro level, is not the end-all-be-all with many women. Many pro players, including Murphy and Gagliardi, retire early because pro women’s hockey often requires getting a fulltime job to make a living wage. 

“That’s a reality of a woman playing hockey,” Koelzer said. 

Making dreams to play ice hockey a reality for girls and women is the ultimate goal for those at the forefront of spreading ice hockey in North Carolina.

Right now, the groundwork for youth and collegiate programs is being laid for the next generation, but the professional trajectory is still an apex to cross. Time and resources — and simply patience — will be required to get North Carolina to the status of Northern states’ programs.. 

“The vision is we want to be a powerhouse program that provides development at the younger ages, competitiveness of the older ages and we want to bring up a pro women’s team here in the next few years,” Reaugh said. “That’s our goal and people are starting to see that goal. And if you can see it, you can be it.”