The smiles throughout the hockey rink at the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich were so bright that they could possibly be seen from space.
And for good reason, as it’s not every day you get to practice and learn valuable skills with professionals in your sports.
That’s exactly what happened Tuesday night, as the Greenwich Panthers ice hockey program had the opportunity to practice for an hour with five members of the Connecticut Whale professional women’s ice hockey team.
“It’s so exciting,” said Katy Gray, girls’ hockey director for the Greenwich Panthers. “The women came down here tonight to coach our girls and talk about how awesome it is that hockey can start when you’re young and really skate all the way professionally. We are so happy to show our girls that this is a possibility.”
Starting at 5 p.m., the three teams that comprise the Greenwich Panthers, the U-14, U-12 and U-10 squads, hit the ice at the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich for the opportunity to learn hockey skills from the best.
The five members of the Whale worked with the Panthers on basic fundamentals, improving their skating, working on shooting and passing drills and gave the youngsters a taste of some of the skill sets that the members of the Whale learned as younger kids.
“We ran a little clinic for the Greenwich girls,” said Kelli Stack, a member of the Whale and also one of the hockey players on the Team USA Olympic squad. “One of my teammates works with them on a regular basis, so we wanted to come out here and put on a little clinic for them. It’s always fun to get out with younger girls and kind of inspire them and show them that we are still playing at our age. They have something to work for.”
Another member of the Whale that helped out was Kaleigh Fratkin, who played collegiate hockey at Boston University and last year competed in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.
“Playing at a young age growing up, any opportunity you have to get out on the ice and skate around with your friends is a great time,” Fratkin said. “I think this is a cool opportunity for these girls because now they have professional hockey players in their backyard. They have the opportunity to skate with people they can aspire to get to that level or look to for role models. It’s a neat opportunity for these girls to look up to us and for us to kind of reminisce back to that age.”
For Ellie Gray, an 11-year-old left defenseman, it was obvious how much fun she had skating with the pros from the Whale.
“It was awesome to skate with them,” Ellie Gray said. “One of the ladies taught us this stick trick and I also learned a lot about stick handling from one of them. They were all really good, and it was nice to have somebody to look up to and relate to. I’ve played hockey since I was three, maybe, and I would really like to play hockey in high school and college.”
And for the members of the Connecticut Whale, a team that plays its home games at Chelsea Piers Stamford, they got to flashback to their youth and how they were aspiring to be hockey stars.
“I started playing when I was four,” Stack said. “It brought back a lot of memories and kind of reminded us that we are out here to have fun. Even at our age we are still having fun.”
Almost as important as the skating lesson, the Greenwich Panthers can see, live and in person, that female hockey players can achieve great things in both high school and college, and also play the sport they love professionally now.
“For myself, growing up I played boys hockey and I never really had any females to look up to and aspire to play professional,” Fratkin said. “For me it was always looking up to college players and going off to an NCAA school and looking up to women’s hockey players from that level. Now that these younger girls can aspire to play professional hockey and do it for a living and get paid is unbelievable. I think it’s just a great opportunity to get connected with these girls and talk to them one-on-one. If they have any questions, be able to answer it for them.”
Even Bobby Walker, Jr., CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich, took a few moments to look behind the glass of the ice rink and take in the action.
“It’s one of those rare moments where kids in our community get a chance to interact with professional athletes, so I am really excited,” Walker Jr. said. “This shows all the possibilities that participating in a program like hockey actually brings. I think that’s what our kids need to understand. We offer all kinds of programming for our kids to get them into this world, from hockey leagues that we have here, to learn to skate programs. It’s great so kids can see that if you start in this world, what you can have the opportunity to become and what you can participate in.”
“It’s remarkable,” Katy Gray said. “Many of these girls play with the boys. That’s how they started. That’s why we started the Greenwich Panthers, to give girls in Greenwich and the surrounding areas the opportunity to grow, learn and develop as hockey players.”
For Katy Gray, this event was also like a happy homecoming. The Greenwich Panthers started out in 2011 using the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich as their home rink, with only a handful of eager hockey talent hit the ice.
With the growth of the program, the Panthers joined the Greenwich Blues and use the Dorothy Hamill Ice Rink.
“Personally I am very proud,” Katy Gray said. “Every year this has grown. We started with one team, then two and now three. And now we are partnered with the Greenwich Blues, which has been around in Greenwich playing competitive hockey since 1973. I am just so proud. To get them all on the ice in their black and purple and learning and playing is the most important thing.”
As for the skating abilities of the young Panthers, they must be strong because it’s not every day an Olympian and professional hockey player is impressed.
“They looked good,” Stack said. “They have some really good players out there, so if they keep it up they could be right there in our shoes some day. This kind of stuff helps us relax a little bit and just have a good time. We are out there to make them smile and have fun. I think we did a good job and they had a good time.”
