March 17, 2009

By Mike Scandura
Special to USAHockey.com

Perhaps all you have to know about the popularity of the New England Women’s Hockey League is this: when founder/director Kerri Macaluso and board members established their first April Showers Tournament in 2003, it drew only four teams encompassing approximately 60 women.

The seventh annual tournament (for women 30 and older), scheduled for the first week in April, will encompass 22 teams and 324 women.

The teams will have players who come from 147 towns representing five states. The average years of experience for each player is 5½; and the total years of experience of all players is nearly 2,000.

Any resemblance between that initial tournament and the 2009 tournament is pure coincidence.

“Originally the tournament was established to have some fun,” Macaluso said. “Once we held the first tournament, we decided it was so much fun we felt we needed to continue it. We found the other teams had players the same age as our daughters.

“We weren’t interested in playing against 18-year-olds who are more physical. That’s why we sat down after the tournament and asked ‘Are there enough people skating at our age level so we can pull off a tournament for women in our age group?’ It had not been done before.”

The answer was a resounding “Yes!”

“It’s a celebration of women’s hockey,” said Macaluso, who made it a requirement in 2001 when the league began play that all women be registered with USA Hockey. “We make this a whole weekend thing. All the women take a lot of pride. We feel like they’re our guests. We make friends and meet new players.”

Among other things, teams are asked to bring raffle baskets. The proceeds go to the Virginia Thurston Healing Center in Harvard, Mass., which gives free therapy for women with breast cancer, and the women’s 50-year-old team from Massachusetts that will be going to the 2009 USA Hockey National Tournament.

When the NEWHL was founded in 2001, it was an in-house league with 30 women on two teams.

“We played against each other on Fridays,” Macaluso recalled. “Right now, we have four teams in the program and we bring in other teams to play us as well. We have nine teams that rotate through the season.

“But this isn’t a league where we have a winner. We play on Fridays and have a great time. My philosophy and that of [co-director Sonya Keene] is we’re making a place for women to come, enjoy the game of hockey and the camaraderie while getting better at the sport. We don’t want to be called hockey moms. We’re hockey-playing mothers. We saw how much fun it was for the kids that we felt we wanted to experience the same kind of fun. Even though many of us never had played a team sport in our lives, we were able to learn skills from our coaches [Paul Ames and Brian Fontes].”

The average age of women in the NEWHL is 45, with the players ranging in age from 31 to 63.

“We tried to design it so women who had younger children, and who could go into work later, could get their kids on a bus and participate in our early-bird program,” Macaluso said. “We try to accommodate everyone and this was a different option. They could skate from 8 to 9:30 in the morning and then get to work.”

The NEWHL is split into three divisions: recreation, D and C. The Recreation Division is for women who are just learning to play hockey.

“They don’t play games when they start,” Macaluso said. “It’s completely learning skating skills, edge work, conditioning and stick handling. At the D level they start playing games. Now, there’s more emphasis on passing, breakouts and actual hockey play. C-level players are faster stronger and have better skills. They play a strategic game of hockey. We try to accommodate teams that have some better players and still have some who are coming up. We want our games to be fairly even. That’s why we created this.”

Since women with families have varying schedules, flexibility is the operative phrase.

“Every woman has a different schedule so we try to set up days so people in the same skill level get to practice and play together,” Keene said. “We keep bringing in people who are inexperienced and new to hockey. For example, we have 24 people in our learn-to-play program.

“They get a year of experience and then they can be considered D level players and can play games. There’s an opportunity to move up to C if you have the speed and you’ve improved your skills.”

Macaluso expressed a particular affinity for USA Hockey.

“Part of our reasoning for requiring our players to register with USA Hockey is USA Hockey takes us seriously and the number of players that are growing in the United States,” she said. “Hopefully, there will be more opportunities for women.”

An example of such an opportunity is the USA Hockey Over-50 Women’s Recreational National Tournament, which is held in Ellenton, Fla.

“By being participants in USA Hockey, we hope they will sponsor this type of tournament so we can play as long as we want,” Macaluso said.

Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.