Ice queens

Hockey has no age limit. It’s a lifelong sport, so say the women in the newly formed Silver Skaters – a division of Spokane Women’s Hockey League for women age 50 and older … much older.

Olga Pasher is 75. Sharon Meyer is 72. Nancy Kellner is 69. Deb Kyle is 63. The other gals are youngsters in their 50s.

Yet those numbers are as irrelevant as the notion that hockey is about blood, broken teeth and fights.

“People have a really strange notion of who plays hockey,” said Kyle, a recently retired college instructor, while helping pin a black Silver Skaters patch on one of her teammate’s oversized jersey.

The Silver Skaters are all about camaraderie, the finesse of skating and playing on a team for fun regardless of their ability to slap the puck into the goal. Besides, checking – slamming your body into your opponent to get the puck from them – isn’t allowed in women’s leagues.

“Women my age did not have team sports when we were young.” said Kellner, who turns 70 this year and attended high school long before Title IX established girls sport teams in 1972. “This is good for us. We’re learning to play as a team.”

Kellner came up with the idea for the Silver Skaters after registering women for the league’s new season. She realized there were enough older skaters to make a team. Then came the idea for a 50-plus women’s jamboree where the Silver Skaters invited other skaters from across the region and Canada.

Spokane’s first Silver Skaters Jamboree is Saturday and Sunday at the Eagles Ice-A-Rena. Because of schedules, weather and short notice, it appears only players from Grand Forks, British Columbia, are attending. Kellner hopes that the jamboree grows to include women from Montana, Alberta and other towns in Washington next year. She would also like to see more women, young and old, take up the sport.

Many of the Silver Skaters didn’t start until they were older. Some started because their husbands played. Others, like Kellner, had children who become interested in the sport. Some received peer pressure from friends who were already playing.

Sharon Meyer started at 57, when her coworker at Spokane Community College encouraged her to join.

“I was hooked,” Meyer said, adding that skating is a good weight-bearing exercise and that it’s easy on the joints because of the gliding.

Yet, like most things, it’s not totally safe. Players still fall. Sometimes they can’t stop and crash into one another. Ankles twist.

“The fights are just part of the show,” Kyle said about the bloody dog piles for which the sport is infamous. “We’re much more into the game.”

Besides, she said, the women’s league scrambles the teams each year so that person who was your nemesis last year is likely to be your teammate this year.

“Nobody wants to make an enemy of friends,” she said.

Because ice access is expensive and time is limited, the Silver Skaters don’t practice. They all just skate during the regular league’s Friday night rec games. Some also skate on co-ed teams.

The women’s games are slower and lower-scoring than the men’s games and the puck is easy to track. Yet there is lots of action and even more laughs.

“My husband always comments that ‘You guys smile too much and laugh on the ice,’ ” Kyle said.

Kellner is always reminding the women to stop apologizing: “There is no ‘sorry’ in hockey.”

As the women get ready for a recent Friday night game, they sip from flasks filled with whiskey, Fireball and other pre-game spirits of courage as they put on their shoulder, knee and elbow pads and tape their colorful stockings in place.

Kyle pulls red jerseys from a big bag and calls out numbers.

“I’m 9,” Meyer shouts, catching the jersey. “Nine. That’s how many grandchildren I have.” She returns to lacing her skates. Then she takes off her gold hoop earnings and puts them in the case that holds her mouth guard.

Jacque Early, 52, swings her silvery gray purse over her shoulder as she holds her helmet with full face guard in the other hand.

“This isn’t a purse,” she jokes. “This is a big bag of whoop ass.”

Jean Tarr, 54, shows off her “hot-flash” gloves, thick protective gloves with holes worn in the fingers.

These women obviously enjoy themselves. The laughing lasts as they sit in the box and as they skate out onto the ice for quick 1-to-2 minute bursts of game time before they switch off with other players.

At 75, Pasher is the “mom” of the team. She hasn’t played in several years but is back on the ice getting ready for the jamboree. Raised in Alberta, Pasher skated a lot as a kid but, even in Canada girls didn’t play hockey.

She remembers moving to Spokane in the ’60s and working with a couple women to start a female hockey team. She laughed, recalling that they wore figure skates with toe picks, wool sweaters and tight jeans. They had helmets but no pads or other safety equipment. Yet that didn’t stop them from learning the game and growing it into what is now a women’s league with more than 50 active members, of which about 15 are part of the Silver Skaters.

“It’s addictive,” Pasher said before heading out to skate a few laps for warm up. “You can’t get out of it.”