Florida Girls Hockey
A new direction and trajectory – Level 3 Florida Alliance
Girls Teams
By Darby Rhodes
This is the third and last part of a multi-part series on Florida Girls Hockey. This first part showed how
Florida Girls Hockey was formed, it’s structure, and the first level of the program. The second part
focused on the second level of the program which involves coordinating rink-based teams throughout
Florida. This third part will highlight the girls teams formed under the Florida Alliance.
As noted in the first part of this series, at the May
2018 annual meeting of the Statewide Amateur
Hockey of Florida, also known as SAHOF, the board
of directors gave the seal of approval to take girls
hockey in a new direction.
The board accepted the initiative presented by
board members Jane Solverson and Jeff Novotny
to undertake a multi-level initiative named Florida
Girls Hockey.
Over the past 20 years or so, whether by design or
by result, Florida girls hockey programs have been
structured with an emphasis of pulling together
high level players to form girls only teams.
But, not enough energy was focused to grow and
foster the development of future players.
Due to several game-changing factors, in just one
year, from 2017 to 2018, the number of Florida
female players registered with USA Hockey
with birth years 2005 and younger grew by an
unbelievable rate of 37%.
These factors included added capacity at local
rinks to support expanded local programs, added
programming including support from the Tampa
Bay Lightning’s Lightning Made girls initiative and
RDV Ice Den, and Florida being host to the USA
Women’s National team that became the gold
medal winning Olympic Team.
The Structure of Florida Girls Hockey
The Florida Girls Hockey program is organized similar to a “house” and encompasses three distinct levels, with the first level
serving as the foundation for the 2 levels above.
The October issue of Florida Hockey Life spotlighted Level 1 -Grass root support for growing the number of girls playing
hockey and assisting in their development.
The November issue we covered Level 2- Coordinating with local programs to bring their teams together.
Level 3- Establishing and maintaining statewide elite and national bound travel teams for girls
As more associations and rinks begin to expand the number of girls in their programs with the support of Level 1, and they
begin to form girls in-house teams and girls programs under the support of Level 2 then more girls will become stronger players
and advance to the travel and elite playing level. A growth in the number of players is necessary to help sustain programs that
in the past have struggled to remain viable for more than a few years.
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