Dreams of playing ice hockey at the professional level could someday be more than just dreams for about 50 girls ages 5-10 who hit the ice with representatives of the Los Angeles Kings on Dec. 7.<\/p>\n
The Kings Care Foundation hosted a Girls Try Hockey for Free program for the second year in a row at Iceoplex Simi Valley. Jennifer Pope serves as senior vice president of community and business development and told the Ventura County Reporter that foundation leaders are \u201csuper excited\u201d about the outreach for girls they perform around Southern California.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been huge successes for us. It includes a hockey session, off-ice experiences such as bedazzling crowns, dry land training, and then we get them on the ice with some of our female ambassadors to get them introduced to the sport and get them familiar on the ice,\u201d Pope said.<\/p>\n
Ambassadors who took part in the event included Manon Rh\u00e9aume, the first woman to play in an NHL game, and Blake Bolden, the first African American player to compete in the National Women\u2019s Hockey League. The L.A. Lions girls\u2019 hockey team also mentored participants throughout the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of them are exposed to the game for the first time,\u201d said Pope, adding that girls\u2019 hockey is one of the fastest-growing speed sports in the United States with a 65% increase in participation during the past 15 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, historically it\u2019s been dominated by men, and to get these girls out there with female ambassadors\u2026they get to see that the girls can do whatever they want and they have a female to look up to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Bolden and Rh\u00e9aume are both L.A. Kings staff members, Pope said, and Bolden is also a broadcaster for outlets including ESPN and Amazon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we\u2019re so fortunate to have her,\u201d Pope said. \u201cShe was the first African American female hockey player. Manone Rh\u00e9aume works in our hockey operations staff on the development side. She was the first professional female hockey player. She actually played for the Tampa Bay Lightning as a goalie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pope said when it comes to ice hockey, it\u2019s nearly as fun to watch as it is to play and every youth hockey player results in 3.5 new hockey fans. \u201cAs a sports fan, I think hockey is the best sport to watch live. So, we obviously just want to expose as many people as we can to the game of hockey,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Pope acknowledged that hockey is not a sport which can be easily learned at a neighborhood park. \u201cHockey has that notorious reputation of it just being, you know, more expensive and more complicated\u2026When we host events like this, you realize that you can just go play ball hockey with your friends or get some skates on and go to your local rink and skate and hopefully the two click and they want to continue to play and learn the game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dreams of playing ice hockey at the professional level could someday be more than just dreams for about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[648,47627,15255,5,47622,47624,47625,6304,145,47626,285,4,47623],"class_list":{"0":"post-362020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-blake-bolden","10":"tag-girls","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-hockey-clinic","13":"tag-iceoplex","14":"tag-jennifer-pope","15":"tag-l-a-kings","16":"tag-los-angeles-kings","17":"tag-manon-rhaume","18":"tag-national-hockey-league","19":"tag-nhl","20":"tag-simi-valley"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115739587037825678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}