Sports
Where The Girls Are
Where The Girls Are
(in central Vermont in the dead of winter)
The
teams rumble from the locker rooms to the benches padded from head to
toe, while the unseasoned amongst the onlookers bemoan the decision to
wear the stylish coat rather than the really warm one. Looking for all
the world like your average ice hockey team, the players step onto the
ice, take their positions, and focus on their on their opponents as they
wait for the game to start.
To the casual observer, what follows looks like hockey on helium. Wearing shoes that resemble space-age Converse All-Stars, women traverse the ice with an I’m-running-with-scissors gait, wielding Îbrooms’ that look like giant McDonald’s coffee stirrers.
Welcome to your average game in the Central Vermont Women’s Broomball League.
The object of the players’ exertions is a ball that can vary between five and eight inches in diameter. “They are spherical – on a good day – but at times can be almost egg-shaped,” says Sandy Reeks of Worcester, who plays goalie. “This makes it particularly difficult to judge where the heck the ball’s going to go.”
Two
defenders and three forwards on each team shadow their counterparts up
and down the ice, whacking the ball toward the nets where goaltenders
shift back and forth, trying to anticipate the next shot. The two referees
do their best to stay out of the way while they issue whistled opinions
on the play. Meanwhile, up to 14 reserves on each bench hoot, cajole,
and slam their brooms – which are no longer actual brooms, but aluminum
or wooden shafts with rubber paddles – on the boards as they wait
for their shift on the ice.
The broomball league is “where all the softball players go in the winter,” says Reeks with a laugh.
League president Lisa Lemieux says that the league, now nine teams and more than 150 women strong, began more than 15 years ago and really does have softball in its ancestry. In the league’s infancy, the people who were playing made a commitment to get their friends to play, and many turned to their summer sport teams. One of Lemieux’s softball teammates talked her into giving it a try.
Borrowing a helmet from her nephew, she pulled her rollerblade knee and elbow pads and soccer shin guards out of their winter hibernation and joined in. “The first time I walked on the ice, I promptly fell on my butt and said ÎI love this game.’ And I was hooked.”
Reeks played field hockey in Britain, and missed the sport when she moved to Vermont. A friend convinced her that her goalie experience on the field would translate easily to broomball, so she decided to give it a try. “As it turned out, it was nothing at all like field hockey and I made a real mess of things at first, but I was enjoying myself so much, though, that it didn’t really matter,” she confesses. “Now I’d be hard pressed to say whether I preferred field hockey or broomball.”
Originally, the league played in a structure called the Salt Shed, a low-tech and unrefrigerated venue. Lemieux recalls, “When it was nice out, we played in water – splashing.” The ice rink at the Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center has been home to the league for the past two seasons. The manicured ice makes a match a chilly experience for the spectator, but much more fun for the players.
The sport isn’t widely known, but seems magnetic to those who do discover it. Lemieux said that people see the game, are intrigued, and want to play Fortunately, she says, it is a fairly easy sport to pick up. “Certainly there is skill to it, but you can learn over a short period of time.” The fun draws players from all over northern and central Vermont and further. “We actually have someone on our roster who comes from Maine when she can.”
Lemieux struggled to name the most important quality in a broomball player. “Athletically, you need to be able to control your body, ” she notes. “You can’t take long strides. If you take off fast, you’ll fall.” Beyond that, she says a sense of humour is the other vital requirement.
The league is one-of-a-kind in the state and rare elsewhere in New England. The nearest similar league, in Berlin, New Hampshire, holds an annual tournament in March. Several teams from the Vermont league make the pilgrimage with brooms, padding, and humour in tow, as it presents a last chance to play after the Vermont league’s February finale with a tournament of its own.
What do these women do between broomball and softball? Fortunately, Lemieux says, the civic center provides an answer – indoor soccer.