Girls, Women, Ice Hockey & Sports

Much as I bemoaned NBC's advertisements at annoying times, I really loved one ad I watched tonight. It was an advertisement that I don't think airs all that well except in North America. It's a mother talking about what her daughter's going to learn from playing ice hockey. Lessons learned. Who she's going to become. And, really, I can't help but wonder how that particular ad would play, for example, in countries around the world where girls aren't expected to learn lessons from sports that they can draw on as adult women.

I'm female. I grew up loving hockey, but not playing the game in an organized fashion (backyard street hockey, fun as it was, doesn't count). And, I'll be honest. Watching men play hockey is and always has been more exciting to me than watching women play. Men's hockey is a different game than women's hockey--checking is part of the men's game; it's not in women's hockey. Most men, physically, are simply bigger, stronger, and faster than most women, and it is my opinion that men's hockey will always be played at a faster, better level than women's hockey by simple virtue of biological, genetic differences.

Yet watching that ad--as a girl who loved sports, as a woman who still loves sports--was encouraging in a way that Olympic women's ice hockey often isn't. Because, typically, Canada and the United States duke it out for gold in women's ice hockey every four years. More often than not, the United States and Canada blow out opposing nations. And when I think about the advertisement I saw tonight and about the quality of women's hockey in other nations, I can't help but wonder. Wonder how that advertisement about sports helping a girl become a woman plays in nations where--it's obvious, Olympic results bear this out--where, at the very least, sports for women are simply not invested in to the same degree as are those same sports for men.

I'm grateful I was born when I was: the chance to play girls' sports as a kid, the chance to learn about winning and losing and effort and so much more from sports, and the progress I've seen, even in the past ten years, in the programs that have sprouted up all over this country, given women the chance to play their own game, develop their own identities, and I'm especially excited to see this in the sport I grew up adoring. Excited to see that the same characteristics I'd want to see developed in all kids--teamwork and sacrifice, support and hard work--can now be developed and cultivated in both boys and girls given the opportunities now available to both sexes. It's thrilling to know that children yet to be born will grow up, in the States and in Canada, anyway, that boys and girls both will get the chance to play sports, and, in so doing, learn all those things so essential to life, whether commitment, endurance, or getting up after you get hurt or beat.

Yet the Olympic results linger. The blowouts of the United States and Canada. The need for further development, and not merely of better developmental women's ice hockey programs in nations around the world. And, without getting too serious on a hockey blog, what the women's sports training reflects about how far we've come. And how far we've yet to go.
About how that ad I adored shouldn't just be played in Canada and the United States. And that it's not about the women playing "with" the men (honestly, women's and men's hockey are different games and should be) as it is, simply, having it said: You're not the same as we are, but you're equal, and as such, you get the same chance we do to learn, to play, to grow, to develop.

So, you know, I'm hoping that, in subsequent Olympics, women's ice hockey becomes way more competitive. Not that I, an ardent patriot when it comes to the women's games (no conflicting interests with NHL players here!) don't still want the American women to win gold. But because, when that level of hockey rises, it's not just about women's ice hockey being more competitive.

It's about that mother/daughter ice-hockey ad being able to be played in countries around the world, and it's about girls having the chance to experience for themselves--not just from watching men--and learn all those lessons that it was once thought they couldn't learn, or, at best, didn't need to learn, and stating, clearly, explicitly: Not only can you learn those lessons, you've got to learn those lessons. So you can show us. So you can teach us. So we can see what you do so we know and learn how to do it for ourselves.

Here's to hoping women's Olympics hockey doesn't remain a 2 (to 3 or 4, at best) nation competition and that future generations of girls get to learn all the lessons of triumph and sacrifice, loss and progress, from heroes of both the men's game and the women's game.