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How the Dallas Stars are breaking barriers for young girls learning to play hockey

The Stars are expanding hockey’s reach by hosting free clinics for girls ages 4 to 14 to learn the game.

MCKINNEY — Ten-year-old Emma Taylor was watching a Dallas Stars game with her family in their Denison home earlier this season when an advertisement popped up for the team’s Learn to Play youth programs.

Her younger brother jumped at the opportunity. Emma’s grandpa bought her skating lessons for Christmas, so her parents asked if she also was interested.

“No, thanks,” she replied.

The family continued to watch Stars games religiously as her brother learned to play. Eventually, a different advertisement piqued Emma’s interest.

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The Stars were showcasing their Learn to Play program for girls. It’s one of the ways the organization strives to expand hockey to people who may not be exposed to the game as regularly. When Emma saw that ad, she wanted to try.

“She’s a very confident individual, but I think it’s a little bit easier to learn something brand new with other people that are similar to you,” her mother, Dianne York, said. “Being around girls and having that support is probably what led her to be like, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ ”

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Taylor, after joining the program at the StarCenter in McKinney, is now one of over 800 girls who have participated in the Stars’ youth hockey programs since they began ramping up in 2021 with assistance from the NHL. Girls youth hockey has become a focus for the Stars, as girls in North Texas have to overcome barriers that exist for women in the sport as well as those in a market where hockey isn’t as popular.

By making hockey more visible and breaking down financial barriers, the Stars have seen girls make up 42% of their in-house recreation programs in the last three years. It’s a number that continues to grow.

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“People that live here, they just don’t realize how big hockey actually is here. The Stars own seven rinks in the D-FW area,” said Allysen Weidner, Stars assistant director of youth hockey. “A lot of people don’t even realize that ‘Oh, my daughter can play hockey,’ and what that looks like and where to start, so it’s really our job to make sure that it’s visible.”

Allysen Weidner demonstrates a proper playing stance to 10-year-old Emma Taylor, left, and...
Allysen Weidner demonstrates a proper playing stance to 10-year-old Emma Taylor, left, and 9-year-old Emma Lupascu during a Dallas Stars' Learn To Play event for girls at the Children's Health StarCenter in McKinney on Feb 10, 2024. (Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

Eliminating hurdles

Weidner understands the hesitation a young girl like Emma may have when the only opportunities are to play with boys.

Growing up in Kansas, that was her only option.

Weidner, who has been with the Stars for eight years, remembers being the only girl on most teams and clinics she participated in before high school.

As the boys got bigger, she and her dad came to the conclusion the best opportunity for her to play would be to move away for high school.

That she did, playing for a prep school in Minnesota and ultimately landing a spot on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s collegiate team in Troy, N.Y.

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“To be able to play girls hockey, it just wasn’t an option where I lived,” Weidner said. “Getting young females into the game and being able to stay home while they do that is huge. That’s my main goal and what I do pretty much on a daily basis.”

Weidner organizes and coaches at the Learn to Play programs at all seven StarCenters in North Texas. The McKinney program specifically for girls saw nearly three dozen attendees at a Saturday clinic The Dallas Morning News attended earlier this month.

Volunteers from high schools, parents and Dallas Stars alumni help coach the participants in drills, teaching them the foundations necessary to play hockey. The program primarily serves ages 4 through 14, but the Stars recently launched a similar program in Euless for women 15 and older, seeing some in their 20s and 30s attend.

The program is free, as are all Stars Learn to Play programs. The Stars receive funding from the NHL’s Industry Growth Fund, through which the NHL and NHLPA have invested more than $180 million over the last decade.

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“Hockey is not a cheap sport compared to a lot of other sports, so the initial cost can be deterring for a lot of families,” Weidner said. “We try to take every hurdle away, so all they can focus on is bring your daughter to the rink and let her fall in love with the game.”

Jocelyn Means, a 16-year-old from Frisco, started playing hockey at the age of 9. She worked...
Jocelyn Means, a 16-year-old from Frisco, started playing hockey at the age of 9. She worked her way up to the Dallas Stars Elite club program and now plays for a prep school in the northeast.(Courtesy of Brandi Means)

Breaking the ceiling

When the Stars have more success on the ice, Weidner said the youth programs benefit as well — for both girls and boys. The same is true for the creation this year of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which allows young girls to visualize playing the sport at a professional level.

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Opportunities for women in the sport are growing. Now, women can play at the collegiate, professional and Olympic level in the United States.

The first NCAA women’s ice hockey tournament wasn’t until the 2000-01 season, but now there are 41 Division I programs and 108 total teams across the NCAA and junior colleges. There are still none in Texas or the south.

Women’s hockey started in the Olympics in 1998, 78 years after the men. In seven appearances, the U.S. women’s team has won gold twice — the inaugural year and in 2018 — and medaled in each appearance.

There are also growing opportunities for Dallas youth to compete at a national level. USA Hockey’s annual high school championships were held in Dallas in 2022. Team Texas, a girls club team, won the title. Frisco boys won a national title in the tournament in 2017. However, all high school hockey competition in Texas is at the club level, as it is not a UIL-sanctioned sport.

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The sport’s growing popularity in Texas and among girls inspired some to attend the Stars’ program in McKinney. But many also stumbled upon it at random.

Emma Lupascu, a 9-year-old from Southlake, learned to skate at a young age but realized she preferred hockey skates to figure skates.

That’s all it took to ask her dad, Dan, to let her try the sport at a clinic the Stars hosted for both boys and girls in Euless. From there, she was hooked.

“I think it’s fun to ice skate,” she said. “It’s like playing soccer just on ice.”

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Her father has been amazed at how quickly she’s picked up the sport. Seeing her play with other girls since she started in the McKinney program this winter has been even more rewarding.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “I’m all for breaking the ceilings. I’m all for it. The more she can do, the more she can champion things, the more supportive we’re going to be.”

Programs exclusively for girls are new in North Texas. When Jocelyn Means, a 16-year-old from Frisco, started playing at the age of 9, she was one of three girls at the Stars’ youth clinics.

Jocelyn stuck with the sport and eventually joined Dallas Stars Elite when she was 11, an all-girls club team within the Stars’ organization.

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After five years with Dallas Stars Elite, Jocelyn wanted to take the next step and moved to Pottstown, Pa., where she plays for a prep school and is chasing her dream of playing college hockey.

“I think they did a really good job of developing girls and their program, especially,” Jocelyn said. “The first year I played, we barely made a team. Every girl who could skate that was 14U made the team. The program has gotten huge.

“I just felt like I wanted the next step. But it definitely prepared me for going up north and, I hope, for college hockey.”

While Jocelyn chose to leave the Dallas area to chase her hockey dream, Weidner’s work with the Stars is to ensure not every girl has to make that choice to play at a collegiate level.

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For girls like Emma Lupascu and Emma Taylor, those decisions are still years away. But even at just 9 and 10, they have more opportunities in the sport than they would have just three years ago.

“It’s fun to see her try something new,” York, Emma Taylor’s mother, said. “I’m really proud of her for trying. She’s making significant progress. It’s awesome to see her geared up with a stick in her hands. It’s pretty cool. She looks like a little warrior.”

Allysen Weidner demonstrates how to recover from a fall as girls practice their hockey...
Allysen Weidner demonstrates how to recover from a fall as girls practice their hockey techniques during a Dallas Stars' Learn To Play event at the Children's Health StarCenter in McKinney.(Jason Janik / Special Contributor)
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