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Schools

Undefeated Hall/Conard Girls Strive for Recognition

Girls hockey isn't yet sanctioned by the CIAC but the WarChiefs' main concern is winning a state title after thrashing Notre Dame-Fairfield Monday.

 

They toil on in relative obscurity despite a perfect record.

The / cooperative girls ice hockey team has cut through its seven opponents like a whistling slapshot, but accolades are hard to come by outside their circle of friends and family.

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Compared to the boys, the girls game is relatively new, particularly on the grass-roots level. Unlike soccer and basketball, hockey is not played across the board among state high schools even on the boys side. Fewer girls play. Venues are much harder to find and more expensive to use than soccer fields and basketball courts.

Surely a gender stigma still hinders progress. The girls game isn’t as fast or aggressive as the boys version.

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But the biggest barrier on the high school level to greater acceptance is that girls hockey has not yet been sanctioned by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Only 20 teams have schedules registered on the CIAC’s website under “Non-CIAC Sports.”

Sanctioning, and with it a CIAC-organized playoff program, is not likely to occur anytime soon. The primary reason is known as dual rostering.

A high percentage of girls – surely the better players – who play for their high school during the winter season are also playing on either a town travel team or in junior programs. Two of Hall/Conard’s top players – sophomore forward Juliana Bailey-Simao and junior defenseman Emily Corrales – play with the Connecticut Northern Lights.

The CIAC restricts players from participating with teams outside the scholastic realm in season in any of its sports. Should a CIAC sanction come with that restriction, girls would be forced to make a difficult choice. Girls high school hockey programs can’t afford to be so restrictive, at least not right now.

“If [CIAC sanctioning] happens, they’ll have to make that choice,” Hall/Conard coach Bruce Woolley said. “It could water it down for a couple years but it depends on what the schools are doing to bring the girls into the program.”

Tri-captain Emmy Jednorowicz, a senior defenseman, plays for the Wolves, West Hartford’s travel team. She enjoys playing as much as she can out of pure love for the sport. Jednorowicz does not intend to play in college.

“I think [playing with the Wolves] is a good opportunity to get in shape for the season, however I’m not an advocate of playing during the season,” she said. “It’s not fair to teammates who don’t play on two teams. Everyone should realize it’s a varsity sport and should come first and sometimes it’s hard to grasp that concept.”

Jednorowicz stressed the sisterhood between the girls on the team as a major attraction.

“We’re such a family on this team. We’re not a team. We are each other’s sisters,” she said. “Coming every single day and having those inside jokes keeps you coming back for more.”

Junior defenseman Caroline Kuzoian used to play junior hockey for the Connecticut Polar Bears, but now plays with the Wolves, a somewhat less demanding approach. She feels the players’ love for the game supersedes any demands posed by the schedule.

“Most of the girls on this team love to play hockey so they don’t really care,” she said. “The parents don’t really like it that much. It gets to be a little much. Sometimes we have Wednesday morning practices and the Wolves practice at 9 o’clock that same night.”

The latest step toward possible CIAC endorsement is defining the state’s leagues. The league in which Hall/Conard participated, the Central Connecticut Girls Hockey League, has now been absorbed into the Southern Connecticut Conference and is run by athletic directors instead of the coaches.

“Having the ADs in charge of the teams is a much better way to have the league run,” Woolley said. “We are now in line with and playing by the same guidelines as all the other high school sports with the one exception of not being sanctioned by the CIAC. We are bound by all CIAC rules with one exception – the girls are allowed to ‘dual roster.’”

Woolley feels playing for two teams at once is detrimental to the girls’ well-being.

“I do not condone dual rostering and hope that the decision to not allow it will be made soon,” he said. “The majority of high school girls that ‘dual roster’ do not have the proper strength and endurance conditioning it take to remain healthy and avoid injury while playing seven days a week and participating in back-to-back practices and/or games.”

The SCC has 10 member schools divided into three divisions, or tiers.

Simsbury, the only other girls hockey team in the greater Hartford area, joins Hall/Conard in Tier 1. The tier also includes Hamden and the North Haven/Amity Regional/Cheshire co-op team. Tier 2 contains Guilford, hand-Madision and Notre Dame-Fairfield. Tier 3 is composed of Lauralton Hall-Milford, Branford and West Haven.

Hall/Conard Routs Notre Dame

A depleted Notre Dame-Fairfield squad was unable to viably compete with the WarChiefs Monday night at Veterans Memorial Skating Rink.

Bailey-Simao and freshman Mikayla Gordon-Wexler had two goals apiece and Corrales added a goal and three helpers in a 9-0 triumph that could have been a lot more one-sided. Hall/Conard scored three goals in the first period despite a stellar performance by ND goalie Brooke Bonetti and added six in the second.

“We were going into this game expecting a [challenge],” said Bailey Amenabar, a junior wing who had a goal and two assists. “We noticed the goalie was very strong but I think we wore her out.”

Amenabar is focused on winning a state championship. Neither CIAC approval nor dual-rostering debates can deter that desire.

“We’re working really hard in practice doing all the extra sprints we can, doing what it takes so we’re not burned out in the third period and can finish,” she said. “We’re definitely going to be playing some more tough teams than we have been.”

The WarChiefs have home-and-home encounters with Simsbury and a difficult road test at New Canaan the last week of the regular season from Feb. 8-13.

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