Lady Falcons: All-Girls Hockey Program

Benefits of Playing Girls Hockey

Social Benefits

• Relationships with other girls: Hockey players develop powerful relationships and often lasting friendships with their teammates.
• Teamwork: On a hockey team, girls learn about cooperation, camaraderie, and friendship. A hockey team is a natural environment in which to learn about ones responsibility to others.
• Relationships with adults: Hockey gives girls an opportunity to spend ongoing periods of time with an adult in a shared endeavor.
• Participating in a community: Hockey fosters a sense of community and pride. Playing for a community gives girls a chance to build their sense of identity.

Personal Benefits

• Valuing preparation: Hockey helps girls learn to prepare their mind and bodies for games and practices.
• Resilience: Hockey provides an unparalleled model for dealing with challenge and disappointment.
• Attitude control: Girls learn that a having a confident attitude improves their performance, and that they have significant control over their attitude.
• Leadership opportunities: Team hockey offers girls a rare opportunity to serve others as leaders.
• Identity and balance: Being part of a group is inordinately important to girls, and hockey makes girls feel like they belong.
• Time management: Young athletes learn to manage their time productively balancing hockey practices, games fitness, school and other life responsibilities.
• Long-term thinking: Hockey players and other athletes often learn the fundamental lesson of sacrificing immediate gratification for long-term gain. This is the basis for personal success as well as for life in general, and perhaps in one's life, no lesson can be more valuable.

Physical Benefits

• Fitness: Girls who play hockey develop general physical fitness by playing a game that’s fun.
• Stress relief: Hockey allows girls to clear their minds of academic and social pressures, to literally skate off tension that’s accumulated in their muscles.
• Mastery: Hockey gives girls a satisfying, enjoyable way to develop their talents and skills.
• Healthy habits: Hockey increases an awareness of how physical and mental effort needs to be supported by proper eating and hydration habits.
• Reduces body fat: Playing hockey is a fun and effective way of burning off calories.
• Cardiovascular system: The sustained energy and muscular strength required in hockey helps develop fitness and endurance.
• Muscle strength: Playing hockey is a great way of developing your body’s leg muscles, including the hamstring, hips and calves. It also improves the endurance of shoulder muscles, triceps and forearms.
• Coordination skills: Hockey relies on good coordination between the eyes and the hands and improves the reflexes and reaction times of its players.