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Epilogues '99: 'The Mothers of Hockey,' Feb. 21 And we mean players, not just 'hockey moms' Sunday, December 26, 1999 By Bob Batz Jr., Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A little more than a year after some of them shakily hit the ice for the very first time, the Mothers of Hockey are hitting their stride.
Carla Jeke even threatened to hit Darius Kasparaitis the morning the Penguins tough guy scrimmaged with these female phenoms at the Iceoplex at Southpointe.
"He knocked me down!" she says, explaining why she dropped her gloves. "Oh, it was a lot of fun."
The women's program at the Washington, Pa., rink has expanded from one to three classes a week. Now 30 to 35 women are regularly donning all the equipment and body-checking the stereotypes that say they shouldn't play this sport.
Joanne DeFazio, the complex's director of hockey programs who started this, says it's "going great. Like, unbelievable. In big part because of the article" that ran in the Sunday Magazine on Feb. 21.
Then, some participants were just learning how to hold a stick. Now, they're getting into power skating and planning an April start for a league with four teams -- the area's first women's league.
Meanwhile, the original group is sporting jerseys with their own logo, a tough-looking puffin, and steadily improving their skills. On a recent Wednesday morning, after working on their positioning and play-making, they posed for a round of team pictures, then headed off the ice to enjoy coffee, cookies, and other goodies -- another Mothers of Hockey tradition.
Nonetheless, "I'm down 14 pounds," says Terri Eaborn, a Green Tree mother of three who wasn't sure if she'd like playing hockey. Now, she hits the ice two or three times a week, and -- with five goals -- is the Puffins' leading scorer (they beat Airport Ice Arena's Ice Angels, but lost to the Southpointe Rink Rats girls team and lost twice to the University of Pittsburgh).
"I think it's neat, the diversity," says the firefighter/paramedic of her fellow players, whose jobs range from hairdressers to doctors, from students to grand-mothers.
Classes are held from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, and increase a buck in cost to $6 in the new year. Beginners are invited to a new class that just started and runs from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Fridays. For information, call 724-873-7606.
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