Please Coach Us Like Males!

Hockey teaches ladies some invaluable life classes

Ladies Hockey: Please Coach Us Like Males!

Up to date: October 15, 2025

By Jordan Elkins

On a latest Sunday morning at UBS Area, residence of the New York Islanders, the staff hosted Ladies Hockey Weekend. Its intention was to foster the event of ladies enjoying the game of hockey. Included had been two Ladies Strive Hockey for Free periods. This program is for women 5 to 10 years of age. It supplies them with the chance to attempt the game in a enjoyable and welcoming setting. Greater than 100 ladies participated within the occasion.

Ladies hockey—in Texas, and everywhere in the US for that matter—nonetheless flies beneath the radar of most individuals. The expansion in reputation of the game has been exponential. Many react to the idea of ladies hockey with one thing like, “Actually? Ladies play hockey?” or, “I didn’t know there was faculty hockey for women too.”

Ladies Hockey: Deal with Us Like Girls, However Coach Us Like Males

For us concerned with ladies hockey this sounds foolish, to say the least. However I’d be prepared to guess all of us have had an encounter like this. And it undoubtedly gained’t be the final.

In most if not the entire articles I write on the topic, I discover a option to relate hockey to life. That’s as a result of hockey supplies for everybody an opportunity to study invaluable classes at a younger age, which might help later in life. But for women, I consider some classes dig a bit deeper.

Permit me to clarify: Mia Hamm, the good athlete and chief of USA’s Olympic soccer staff, as soon as mentioned, “Coach us like males and deal with us like ladies.” Women and girls are continually searching for a stability between being seen as a girl, however not having that held in opposition to them. Most of us wish to be seen for the potential we have now, and never simply our gender. Although we’re proud we’re ladies, we really wish to be thought to be people who possess energy, potential, and are able to making an influence. Hockey provides ladies firsthand expertise at coping with this ever-changing stability.

A Little Bit More durable, A Little Extra

Many women rising up in small cities—or areas the place ladies hockey isn’t so widespread—usually must buckle their helmets and step onto the ice with the boys, and with much more to show. All of us want to consider that the enjoying subject is equal. That it actually doesn’t matter to younger gamers, their dad and mom, and coaches if there’s a woman on the ice with the boys. However I believe we all know the reality. Some ladies might must work a bit bit tougher and provides a bit bit extra with the intention to be seen because the hockey participant they wish to be. This lesson can both be extremely useful, or extremely hurtful. Nonetheless, it’s a lesson nonetheless, and one which I’m dedicated to serving to my younger gamers see.

Right here in Texas, we don’t have another all-girl groups to play so we compete in opposition to boys’ groups. At first, some groups are reluctant to schedule video games in opposition to our U14 staff. However once they do, earlier than we step on the ice, I remind the ladies to have a look at the larger image. To show to themselves and everybody else within the rink that they are going to be aggressive irrespective of who they’re enjoying in opposition to. To indicate that it isn’t a “woman’s staff” versus a “boy’s staff,” however two hockey groups competing in opposition to one another.

Chances are you’ll suppose asking 13- and 14-year-olds to see the larger image is a misplaced trigger but it surely actually isn’t, not for women. These ladies have chosen hockey for a cause: as a result of it began as one thing unknown. As a result of it’s about laborious work; as a result of it’s about their staff; as a result of it provides them a problem and intrigues them. And extra importantly, as a result of being outlined as a hockey participant is one thing that makes them so proud.

The Biggest Factor to Be a Half Of

Ladies don’t simply wish to be informed what to do in a drill; they continually wish to know why they’re doing the precise drill. And for a coach who as soon as was that younger woman asking tons of questions, it’s the best factor to be part of.

That is the right age to assist ladies hockey gamers foster confidence in themselves, any means doable. They want to have the ability to rely on one another as a staff. And likewise to study to belief themselves and consider in what they personally can accomplish. As a result of if they’ll first study these classes throughout the partitions of the rink, they are going to be extra prepared to trust in themselves and their potential once they take their gear off and head out into the world.

Ladies actually do should be coached like males, however handled like ladies. They wish to have enjoyable, they wish to be social, however they’re additionally thirsting for laborious work. There’ll all the time be assumptions, there’ll all the time be stereotypes, and lots of won’t ever take ladies’ sports activities as critically as they do males’s sports activities. So it’s as much as the ladies hockey gamers and their coaches to continually show their worth and price.

Conclusion

Coaches of girls’s groups ought to count on extra. They have to push extra, and discover a stability between the small print and having enjoyable. They have to additionally intention to point out them that working laborious as a staff is what is going to finally make the season as enjoyable and rewarding as doable.

As we’ve all heard earlier than, hockey isn’t all about successful. However for the ladies who select to put on their bows within the type of hockey laces, there may be an unimaginable quantity up for the taking.

Jordan Elkins is the previous coach of the Dallas Stars Elite hockey membership. From an article showing on WomensHockeyLife.com—Grownup Leisure Hockey. Printed with permission.