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Spotlight on: Newton Youth Hockey's Girls Program

By Jamie MacDonald , 03/18/21, 3:30PM EDT

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It had been nearly a decade since Newton Youth Hockey had a girls’ program, but with the addition of Lisa Casillo, the Girls Program Director, both Casillo and Newton have their sights set on growth. 

Casillo is now coming off her second year in the role, and she has already seen positive signs even through a year where so much was made uncertain by a global pandemic.

“We just noticed there were some gaps in fostering the love of the game,” says Casillo, who grew up around hockey in Buffalo and once worked as an intern for the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

Her daughter, now 9, plays on a coed team.

“She prefers coed right now, and you can see some of the fun that she had last year with her teammates,” Casillo says. “I thought it was just really cool to see three girls on that team, and they all preferred coed at the time. But they loved goofing off together. We also noticed some little things that would be cool to grow the [girls’] game a little bit. I kind of got the sense there were missing programs.”

Casillo also became acutely aware of considering the effort to build a program as opposed to building teams. 

“Once we got really, really into it, the board and I, we noticed that people were scrounging around to form teams versus asking where the interest was coming from,” she says. “There’s a difference between a program and a team. And I think some people started to confuse that a little bit. So that is kind of where the passion started to go toward.

When it comes to growth, their own backyard was going to become as good a source as any.

So, even if there aren’t suddenly scores of new girls’ teams in Newton, growth is happening.

“I had to be patient,” Casillo says. “And I’m not very patient. But I had to take a step back and realize we might not have another team for another year or so. We’re going to have to grow the interest and start from the foundation. We have to build the program in the community that we have here in Newton. And we know we have it.”

To wit, even while Covid posed threats to all activities, Casillo found ways to grow interest.

“We decided to do a middle school girls Learn to Play,” she says. “I have run Learn to Play for a while and I’ve noticed that half or a third of our roster are girls, so I knew there was that interest. I said, ‘OK, why don’t we just try it and see how it goes?’ We did a girls Learn to Play where we combined the younger and middle school [players].”

The first of the events ran in January. 

“The little ones, you could kind of tell were tapped, but the middle school ones, all of them, asked for an extended version,” says Casillo. “We knew the day was a success and we just ran with that. It was so cool.”

The extended session in February led Casillo to set up yet another session in March.

“Of the eight [middle school] girls, all of them moved on to the February session, and three girls joined on top of that,” she says. “In March, some were bummed that soccer was kicking off. They still wanted to do hockey.”

Casillo says a handful of the girls will go to coed next season, two will go to all-girls teams in Brookline or Waltham and two will join Newton’s U10 group next year.

Newton Youth Hockey Website

Click here to see more from Newton Youth Hockey.

Again, Casillo is aiming to build participation among girls’ hockey players. Her dream scenario?

“Growing a community that girls feel comfortable in,” she says. “Whether they’re playing coed or all-girls, the fact that they feel equal on their teams. Down the road, just as we’re growing, the goal is to make sure the girls feel welcome on any team they’re on and that they feel totally supported, that they feel we are supporting them on the ice and off the ice.”

The best thing about our program: 

“Right now everyone is just open to everything, open to every idea,” says Casillo, who points out it should not go unnoticed that the Newton Youth Hockey website banner has been changed to celebrate gender equality month for March. “So much has changed, so we have to be open to it. If something is on the news or there’s any kind of female leadership day, it all comes back to female hockey. And we have to be really, really flexible and find points to highlight.” 

“I think the biggest thing is just overcoming previous hurdles,” Casillo says. “People either don’t believe we’re sustainable or they don’t believe we have anything going. And, again, that leads back to how we’re saying we have to build a program. In order to overcome our hurdles, we have to tap into our own community and find girls of all different ages who want to play hockey.”

Again, Casillo is aiming to build participation among girls’ hockey players. Her dream scenario?

“Growing a community that girls feel comfortable in,” she says. “Whether they’re playing coed or all-girls, the fact that they feel equal on their teams. Down the road, just as we’re growing, the goal is to make sure the girls feel welcome on any team they’re on and that they feel totally supported, that they feel we are supporting them on the ice and off the ice.”

The best thing about our program: 

“Right now everyone is just open to everything, open to every idea,” says Casillo, who points out it should not go unnoticed that the Newton Youth Hockey website banner has been changed to celebrate gender equality month for March. “So much has changed, so we have to be open to it. If something is on the news or there’s any kind of female leadership day, it all comes back to female hockey. And we have to be really, really flexible and find points to highlight.” 

The most challenging thing about our program:

“I think the biggest thing is just overcoming previous hurdles,” Casillo says. “People either don’t believe we’re sustainable or they don’t believe we have anything going. And, again, that leads back to how we’re saying we have to build a program. In order to overcome our hurdles, we have to tap into our own community and find girls of all different ages who want to play hockey.”

The next big thing:

Newton will continue to focus on growth from the ground up.

“I started reaching out to local towns and will be forming a partnership with them on the ice for girls middle school programs,” says Casillo. “We saw that was a success. We foresee that going on next year with the girls middle school programs getting a little bit bigger.”

Casillo had also considered forming a 10U team, but a Zoom call earlier this month changed her thinking. 

“When we started talking to our families, some of them still wanted to do coed,” she says. “Now they’ve been on their fourth year of coed, and now they want to stay coed, but they still want those options. So we’re kind of working together. We will have one hour of off-ice activity and one on-ice activity per month. So we’re going to make that transition toward building those bonds, and the girls are able to hang out and compete together.”

Before those 10Us are ready for 12U, Casillo will also have considered the families’ positions on next steps for their players.

“This is kind of their group and they’re paving the way,” she says.  “So, we’ll kind of see how that goes.”

The final word:

“Be patient and listen to your community,” says Casillo. “We’re doing this to grow a program and grow interest in the game for the female hockey community.”

Hockey For Moms Too!

Not only is Newton embracing growing the girls game, they are reaching adult women, too.

When Casillo discovered the association had some free ice, she tossed out the idea of a Mom's Learn to Play. Winner.

"By pure coincidence, it was the first day of our Girls/Middle School Girls Learn to Play," Casillo said. "So, girls walking into the rink to try hockey saw grown women stepping off the ice with hockey helmets, hockey skates and sticks. I could imagine it was a cool experience for them to see."