Episode 6

The Golden Age

Feature Stories

Girls Just Want To Play Hockey

All her life, people told Susan Yovic that girls shouldn't play with boys. She never listened.

After the Yovic family relocated from Chicago to the western tip of the Island of Montreal in the early 1960s, settling in the small town of Baie d'Urfe, they enrolled their 11-year-old daughter in figure skating lessons. When young Susan told her parents she would rather play hockey, they immediately took her out to buy a new set of skates.

Susan quickly became a fixture in the pick-up hockey games played by the kids in her neighbourhood after school and on weekends. Hungry for more ice time, she tried to join the local minor hockey association, but found that Baie D'Urfe had no girls teams. Undeterred, Susan signed up to play with the boys.

Of course, not everyone was impressed by her trailblazing ways.

"My mom's bridge group is horrified that I play hockey with the boys and they tell her so," Susan once said. "One of my mom's best friends is particularly upset. She had a huge argument with my dad and told him I'm a beautiful and feminine little girl and should not be playing hockey. She warned him that I would lose my teeth, and how would he like to see his daughter walk down the aisle with missing teeth."

At the age of 13, Susan was forced out of Baie D'Urfe boys hockey amid complaints about her sharing a dressing room with members of the opposite sex. No other reason for her rapid dismissal was given, leaving Susan bitter and disappointed.

A few years later, Susan ran into another barrier. When she tried to join a men's intramural team at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, she was asked to quit by a school physician who feared for her safety.

Never one to go quietly, Susan responded by creating a rag-tag women's hockey club at Colby in 1971. Four years later it became the second American collegiate women's team to receive varsity status.

Susan Yovic, Courtesy of Susan Yovic