Smashville Women's Collegiate Hockey Showcase
You’re Invited! And we have your free ticket.
The NCAA SMASHVILLE Women’s Collegiate Hockey Showcase featuring Northeastern University, Princeton University and Cornell University will be held Friday, November 25 through Sunday, November 27, 2022 at the Ford Ice Center Bellevue.
The women’s tournament will be accompanied by the SMASHVILLE Girls Hockey Showcase, which allows aspiring athletes at the Tier I and II levels to compete against each other and watch and learn from some of the best female hockey players in the world.
Game Schedule:
- 3 pm Fri, Nov 25 – Northeastern vs Princeton
- 3 pm Sat, Nov 26 – Cornell vs Northeastern
- 12 pm Sun, Nov 27 – Princeton vs Cornell
The Nashville Predators Foundation has invited Play Like a Girl to attend the 3pm Friday, November 25th battle between #7 Northeastern and #15 Princeton University.
Register here, and enter promo code PLAYLIKEAGIRL to receive one free ticket at checkout:
Hope to see you in the stands on Friday!
Preds Girls Hockey Clinic
We’re thrilled to team up with the Nashville Predators to bring girls a FREE ice hockey clinic and live Q&A webinar with Preds female staff to celebrate Girls & Women in Sports Day. No ice skating experience needed. It all goes down on February 6th at 3 pm. Limited space available, so be sure to sign up today!
Sign up HERE
PREDS Girls Hockey
The new Preds FREE Girls Hockey program will be broken down into two distinct demographics: new players and continuing players. In the winter/spring of 2021, we will relaunch the program with a renewed focus on first-time players, the Preds Girls Hockey Development Program. The curriculum will focus on the learn to skate and learn to play development models to build a strong skating foundation and help overall development. Players will be split into two age groups named for the most decorated captains in United States national team history: Granato (ages 4-10) and Duggan (ages 11-17). Each division will have 30 players.
This is the first program created under the Predators commitment to growing girls hockey, in association with the NHL and NHLPA Industry Growth Fund grant.
Preds Girls Hockey Development Program: 12-week development program
Weeks 1-4: Learn to Skate
- The first four weeks will focus largely on the skating technique. It is important to teach the fundamentals of skating for improved overall development.
Weeks 5-12: Learn to Play
- At week 5, players will start to focus on the Learn to Play model of the program. Hockey skills will be introduced at a quicker pace since skating fundamentals have already be covered in the previous weeks.
Sign Up HERE
US-Mexico-Nicaragua International Sports Programming Initiative
The US-Mexico-Nicaragua International Sports Programming Initiative, organized by WorldChicago and the Women Win Foundation, is a US Department of State-sponsored exchange program that aims to promote sports as a tool for development, particularly in women's empowerment, gender equality, and youth leadership.
The program is currently looking to enroll aspiring and non-elite coaches and administrators of Girls Sports (aged 20 and over) from the United States in a virtual exchange, scheduled to run from November 6 to December 18, 2020, and a tentative in-person exchange in Chicago, scheduled to occur in May 2021.
American participants will benefit from the following perks:
- FREE access to a series of expert-led workshops on coaching and sport administration for social change from November 6 - December 18, 2020.
- Double-Goal Coaching Certification from the Positive Coaching Alliance at ZERO cost.
- Meaningful cultural and professional exchanges with athletic professionals from Mexico and Nicaragua.
- Recognition as program alumni of the US Department of State and exclusive access to alumni support resources.
If you are interested in promoting equal opportunity in sports and expanding your professional network in Latin America, apply today at: https://bit.ly/3hrhBwl.
Questions? Contact Brian Peckrill at [email protected] or Thi Nguyen at [email protected].
Play Like a Girl Hits The Ice
Play Like a Girl Camp strikes again! This time, our super exciting sports destination was the Ford Ice Center, where we had a seriously chilly and extremely FUN afternoon of ice skating.
We started the day off with an inspiring career panel — seriously, girls, the discussion was filled with major info — where we had a chance to meet six amazing women behind our favorite hockey team, the Nashville Predators, before being treated to our own little pizza party. They do EVERYthing for Smashville. In fact, Rebecca King, Senior Director of Community Relations, was hugely responsible for us being there.
We learned about a variety of careers from communications and social media to creative services and corporate partnerships. Before hearing from them, we really had no idea that we girls could do all of that in a male sport. I won't lie...we were a little shy! So, Dr. Kim and our parents asked all the interesting questions. But I promise we learned a lot.
When asked about failure, the ladies encouraged us girls to embrace failure as fuel to build our confidence and keep playing, learning and growing--both on and off the rink. A few talked about the challenges they face being women in a male-dominated workspace. "Often, I'm the only woman boarding that plane. The only woman in the locker room. At times this season, I've had to remind myself that I'm there because I'm qualified. I'm there because I'm great at my job, and I happen to be a woman," said Natalie Aronson, Corporate Communications Manager, who highlighted the important and unique qualities that women offer in the workplace as well as the critical role that male advocates play in the advancement of women in the sports industry.
Next, we gathered in teams of 3-4 for a quick STEM lesson and reaction time test. Using a yardstick and help from teammates, we learned about the importance of quick reflexes and response time in the job of the "goalie" on a hockey team. As you may know, the goalie's job is to prevent the opposing team from scoring a point by stopping the hockey puck from entering the net. Goalies need to have the ability to react extraordinarily fast when a hockey puck is whizzing towards them at 90 miles per hour, or they'll come up toothless, lol.
Resting our arms in the air, we held our thumbs and index fingers about an inch apart while a teammate held the yardstick so that its bottom end was between our two fingers. Without warning, the teammate holding the yardstick dropped the yardstick. And we closed our fingers to catch the yardstick as quickly as we could, repeating the activity until everyone had a chance at it. After each rotation, we wrote down the number of inches the yardstick fell before we caught it and calculated the average to see who had the quickest reaction time.
We learned that an average person catches the yardstick at around 6 to 8 inches. This is a reaction time of .177 to .204 seconds. That's pretty fast, right? But to match the reaction time of a professional hockey goalie, who needs to stop a puck traveling at 90 mph from 20 feet away, we would have to catch the yardstick at 4.5 inches! A hockey puck traveling at 152 feet per second will travel 20 feet in .152 seconds. That's about 1/10th of a second. It was a fun activity but we'd better keep practicing with our yardsticks if we ever want to become a goalie!
Finally, we laced up our skates and hit the ice. Some of us literally hit the ice. (Kidding! Or am I? I’ll never tell.) With the plexiglass surrounding the rink, the smell of stinky feet from the ice skates, cheers and flashing lights from cameras on the sidelines and the slick, shining ice, we might as well have been in a game at Bridgestone Arena. Oh, and did I mention that Gnash hit the ice with us too?! It was sooooo much fun!
After making several rounds (and several Boomerangs; we can’t help ourselves!), we removed all the layers and took it straight outdoors to the playground. We also replaced some of those calories we’d torched on the ice — our butts were feeling it from all the falls — with ice cream and slurpies after playing with new friends under the hot sun.
We want to say a huge thank you to our partners at the Nashville Predators and Predators Foundation that make fun camp days like this possible and to Ford Ice Center for hosting us at their magical ice rink! If you want to get in on our next super fun STEM and sports camp in September (Trust us, you do. It’s gonna be goooood.), then make sure to subscribe to our email newsletter here or in the footer of any page on our website.