Motherpuckers teach women's hockey with joy, commitment and a little irreverence

It was a typical northern Minnesota winter night at Glen Avon Park in Duluth earlier this month. A fresh carpet of snow covered the ground. The temperature barely dropped to zero. And the unmistakable sound of skates cutting across the ice came from the hockey rink.

But this wasn't the typical scene of young rink rats racing around the ice. Instead, there were skaters of all levels, from 30 to 60 years old, some speeding around the rink, others teetering on shaky skates.

They whooped and cheered, they scored and crashed and most of all they laughed.

They are the Duluth Mother Puckersa group dedicated to playing women's hockey for beginners, in a supportive, low-pressure environment.

I don't even notice the cold. It's like being a kid again because you're just playing, said Julie Flotten, 54, during a break from a scrimmage.

Flotten, who works as an oncology nurse, skated a bit as a child, but never played hockey. Last year she found the Motherpuckers. She immediately felt welcome.

It's rare to have such a community as adults, Flotten said, where people are willing to learn something new, to be crazy and vulnerable.

Players come for the camaraderie, the challenge and the adrenaline. During the scrimmage, two players collide and fall hard to the ice.

Playback stops momentarily. The skaters slowly get on their knees, check if they are doing well, and then hug each other while laughing.

Later, one of the players, Deanna Notaro, proudly shows off her jersey.

This is shirt number 53 because I started playing hockey when I was 53, she said. This was only her fourth training.

I am what Motherpuckers was made for, says Notaro, a nurse. I have a lot to work on, but it makes it challenging and fun, and I have a lot of good mentors around me.

From Chicago to Duluth

One of those mentors is Liesa Klyn, who learned to skate at a Motherpuckers club outside Chicago. When she moved to Duluth a few years ago, she couldn't find a novice women's hockey program. So she started her own business.

She talked to other moms whose kids she knew played hockey, and together they tried it out.

I was convincing, Klyn acknowledged. I did some drills, we did a scrimmage and we all had a lot of fun, and decided to try a first season.

One of her first recruits was Kimberly Rines, who was excited yet very anxious to play. Growing up in Seattle, she had only skated a handful of times. But she said the group was incredibly supportive.

No one is saying you shouldn't be here, or that you're not good enough. And you know, at my age that doesn't happen very often, where you can start something from scratch, even though you've never done it before, and still feel like you belong.

Rines, who is now 53, used to have to hold on to the boards as she skated around the rink. Now she skates backwards, and fast, and can stop without crashing too badly, she says.

It was a huge learning curve.

A humiliating game

Missy Watschke, another member of the original group that recruited Klyn, admits she still gets scared every time she laces up her skates. She said her son had to help her on the ice the first time she played.

But it's good to challenge yourself, said Watschke, 49. And it keeps you young, and I think it was quite humbling to sit in the stands watching my son play, because it's so much harder than it seems.

Some of the Motherpuckers are indeed mothers. And some are hockey moms, whose children play the game.

As mothers, it's easy to yell at our kids from the stands, said Lisa Consie, 44, who grew up skiing in Biwabik because there was no girls' hockey at her high school at the Iron Range.

But when you stand on the ice and tell them to skate faster, we understand now. We tried to learn a little more about the game and understand more about what our kids are going through.

Notaro's daughter helped her learn stickhandling. She tapes her stick. She has even determined that her mother is left-handed. She's on my side, Notaro said.

The first year the group was formed, they had 40 skaters. The following year the number of players doubled. This year they increased the number to 60 to keep practices manageable.

They play outside once a week and last year they started reserving ice time indoors because of the unusually warm winter.

They only play among themselves. Our joke that we like to say is that we are fooling ourselves, Klyn said.

And they come from all walks of life. Rines owns a dog grooming business. There are healthcare professionals, professors, a firefighter, a writer. Klyn teaches high school computer science and coaches robotics.

And I love that at the end of the day it doesn't matter, I can fall, I can fail and I can get back up, Klyn said. It's just pure joy. I think I laugh more here than anywhere else in my life.

After the scrimmage, Klyn gathers the players in a circle on the ice. After everyone completes a set of boards, she says to the team members on the way out: I want you to find four skaters and tell them they're having an excellent Monday.

Stuart Getty hangs out on the ice to cool off. They first learned about the Motherpuckers in an article stating that the team was open to women, non-binary people and transgender people.

I use they-them pronouns. I am non-binary. And so I contacted them and said, Hey, my name Stuart. I would like to learn to play hockey. What do you think?

They had recently moved from California to Duluth and were concerned that they would not be welcome.

Instead, they have been astonishingly inclusive, Getty said.

Getty recalled the first practice of the year, when players took turns explaining why they were part of the Motherpuckers.

“It literally brought me to tears,” Getty said. Some said I couldn't play because I had no money. For others, their parents said no to hockey, or they said I was a girl so I couldn't do that. Others played, but stopped because it became too competitive and wasn't fun anymore. There's just all these stories of people where hockey said no to them, and this team says yes.

Which sums up the Motherpuckers. They support each other as they challenge themselves to do something very difficult, learning a sport that can be extremely intimidating to learn as an adult, especially in a state where many children learn to play before entering kindergarten.

One of the things I'm trying to do is combat my own fear of aging by trying some scary things, says Adeline Wright, 47, a hair salon owner in Duluth.

And there's a place for all of us on this team, which feels really cool.