Stamford
Spinnakers
The Girls & Women's
Ice Hockey Association
of Stamford, Connecticut
www.spinnakers.org
Since 1998
|
Fun, Competitive
Girls and Women's Ice Hockey |
Update: February 2013. At least five of our alumnae are now playing with the Stamford Stampede. It's a team of mixed experience and ability, and the competition is just as varied. We know how hard it is to organize and maintain a team like this, so we salute the women in charge and wish the whole team continued success. We don't know whether there is any room on the roster, but you can learn more by contacting Susan Hynes, Nora Hynes, Heather Parker, Megan Peterson or Caitlin McDonough. Some of them still wear the "Spinnnakers" stickers on their helmets! Megan still wears her Spinnakers socks! Founding alumna Caitlin Barnes made a cameo appearance in late January, scoring the Stampede's three goals in a heavy loss to a team from Central Park NYC.
Let's hear from more former members of the Spinnakers? Are you playing? What else is new?
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The Stamford Spinnakers came into being in 1998, shortly after US Women's Team won gold in the Nagano Olympics. For the next ten years, girls (ages 7-18) from all over Fairfield County joined in a "Girls Spring Hockey" program hosted by the Spinnakers. This was instrumental in strengthening girls hockey clubs and teams in the public high schools of many nearby towns, but the schools of Stamford were not ready to host girls ice hockey. So, from 1998 through 2010, the Stamford Spinnakers hosted an active and competitive team for local high school girls, many of whom went on to play intercollegiate and adult recreational hockey, some of whom are still playing and/or coaching hockey today.
Parents' enthusiasm for girls hockey seems to rise and fall like the tide. A decade after Nagano, there were very few girls of elementary school ages participating in Stamford's local youth hockey association, and the impact was soon visible in the high school roster, which began to include girls from other parts of the county. We established teams at the 14U and 12U levels, but we had no takers from Stamford, and the rosters quickly filled with girls from Darien and Greenwich. (All wonderful girls, but all headed for the teams at Darien HS and Greenwich HS.) In 2009, all three Spinnakers teams were disbanded, because we were no longer serving Stamford. For the next two years, the Spinnakers hosted an adult team, primarily for graduate members, who returned to Stamford after college. Ultimately, job relocations, scheduling conflicts, fee shock (parents no longer paying!), and the difficulty of finding suitable opponents took a toll. So, the jerseys were laundered and stored away, in the hope that the local tide of enthusiasm for girls hockey at the youth hockey level someday rises again.
