MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For a lot of people currently living through winter in Minnesota, hockey is life. Now, if you did not grow up playing the sport, it can be intimidating to learn as an adult. Hence, this one hockey club for beginner women called - actually, I'm going to have Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Kraker tell you all about it.
DAN KRAKER, BYLINE: OK, listen close because the name of this team is appropriate for public radio.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Let's go, Motherpuckers.
KRAKER: That's right, the Motherpuckers - yes, with a P. There are a handful of like-minded clubs that share the name across the country. This one is based in Duluth.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE BLOWING)
KRAKER: At a recent scrimmage at an outdoor neighborhood rink, the temperature was in the single digits, but Julie Flotten barely noticed.
JULIE FLOTTEN: I don't even pay attention to the cold. It's just like being a kid again 'cause you're just playing.
KRAKER: Flotten is 54. She's an oncology nurse in Duluth. She skated a little bit as a kid but never played hockey. Then last year, she found the Motherpuckers.
FLOTTEN: Everyone's so welcoming, right?
(CROSSTALK)
FLOTTEN: So it feels like it's rare to have a community like that as adults - people willing to learn something new and be silly and be vulnerable.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLADES SCRAPING ON ICE)
KRAKER: Some more experienced players fly across the ice, but others are still wobbly on their skates.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Laughter).
KRAKER: And then two players collide and crash to the ice. They get to their knees, make sure they're OK, and then hug each other, laughing. One of them, Deanna Notaro, proudly shows off her jersey.
DEANNA NOTARO: This is jersey number 53 because I started hockey when I was 53 years old.
KRAKER: This is only Notaro's fourth practice.
NOTARO: I'm what Motherpuckers was made for. I have a lot to work on, but it makes it challenging and fun. And I have a lot of good mentors around me.
KRAKER: One of whom is Kimberly Rines, also 53.
KIMBERLY RINES: Nobody says, you know, that you shouldn't be here or that you're not good enough. And at my age, that doesn't happen very often, where you can kind of start something from scratch, never having done it before, and still feel like you belong.
KRAKER: Rines and many others are truly mothers. Many have kids who play hockey and wanted to learn the game themselves. Forty-two-year-old Liesa Klyn started the Duluth team a couple of years ago after learning to play at a Motherpuckers club outside Chicago. There are professors and designers, firefighters and hairstylists. Sixty members play once a week, outdoors, just among themselves.
LIESA KLYN: I love that, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLADES SCRAPING ON ICE)
KLYN: Like, I can fall down, and I can fail. And I can get back up, and it's not important. It's just pure joy. So much laughing - I think I laugh more here than at any other space in my life.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Ugh.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Go, go, go, go, go.
KRAKER: After practice, Stuart Getty lingers on the ice to cool off. They learned about the Motherpuckers in an article that said the team was open to anyone who wanted to play women's hockey.
STUART GETTY: And I use they/them pronouns. I'm nonbinary. And so I reached out to them and said, I'd love to learn how to play hockey. What do you guys think? And they were like, heck yeah. We said, welcome to all, so come on down. 'Cause, like, I look real gay, and I came from California. And I was like, oh, God, they're going to hate me. And they have been amazingly inclusive.
KRAKER: Getty, who's 43, says a lot of their teammates wanted to play hockey when they were younger, but many were told girls couldn't play. For some who did, it got so competitive, it wasn't fun anymore.
GETTY: There's just, like, all these stories of people where hockey said no to them, and this team says yes.
KRAKER: Which kind of sums up the Motherpuckers - they support one another while challenging themselves to do something really hard, and they have a lot of fun doing it.
(CHEERING)
KRAKER: For NPR News, I'm Dan Kraker in Duluth.
(SOUNDBITE OF NATHANIEL DREW X TOM FOX'S "MEU JEITO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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