‘Motherpuckers’ teach women’s hockey with joy and inclusion, and a little irreverence
Duluth hockey team Motherpuckers teaches beginner hockey for women, nonbinary and transgender people
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It was a quintessential northern Minnesota winter night earlier this month at Glen Avon Park in Duluth. A fresh tapestry of snow blanketed the ground. The temperature barely cleared zero. And the unmistakable sound of skates carving across ice scratched out from the hockey rink.
But this wasn’t your typical scene of young neighborhood “rink rats” racing around the ice. Instead, there were skaters of all abilities, from 30 to 60 years old, some speeding around the rink, others teetering on unsteady skates.
They whooped and they cheered, they scored and they crashed and above all, they laughed.
They’re the Duluth Motherpuckers, a group dedicated to playing beginner women’s hockey, in a supportive, low-pressure environment.
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“I don’t even pay attention to the cold. It’s just like being a kid again, because you’re just playing,” said Julie Flotten, 54, during a break from a scrimmage.
Flotten, who works as an oncology nurse, skated a little bit as a kid, but never played hockey. Then last year, she found the Motherpuckers. She immediately felt welcomed.
“It’s rare to have a community like that as adults,” said Flotten, where people are “willing to learn something new, and be silly and be vulnerable.”
Players come for the camaraderie, the challenge and the adrenaline. During the scrimmage two players collide, and fall hard to the ice.
Play stops for a brief moment. The skaters slowly get to their knees, make sure they’re ok, and then give each other a hug, laughing.
Later, one of the players, Deanna Notaro, proudly shows off her jersey.
“This is jersey number 53 because I started hockey when I was 53 years old,” she said. This was only her fourth practice.
“I’m what Motherpuckers was made for,” said Notaro, a nurse practitioner. “I have a lot to work on, but it makes it challenging and fun, and I have a lot of good mentors around me.”
From Chicago to Duluth
One of those mentors is Liesa Klyn, who learned to skate at a Motherpuckers club outside Chicago. When she moved to Duluth a few years ago, she couldn’t find a beginner women’s hockey program. So she started her own.
She talked to other Moms she knew whose kids played hockey, and together, they tried it out.
“I was persuasive,” acknowledged Klyn. “I ran some drills, we scrimmaged, and we all had a blast, and decided to try an inaugural season.”
One of her first recruits was Kimberly Rines, who was excited yet very apprehensive to play. Growing up in Seattle, she had only been on skates a handful of times. But she said the group was incredibly supportive.
“Nobody says that you shouldn’t be here, or that you’re not good enough. And you know, at my age, that doesn’t happen very often, where you can start something from scratch, never having done it before, and still feel like you belong.”
Rines, who’s 53 now, had to hold on to the boards at first when she skated around the rink. Now she skates backwards, and skates fast, and can stop “without crashing too bad,” she says.
“It’s been a huge learning curve.”
A humbling game
Missy Watschke, another member from the original group Klyn recruited, admits she still gets scared every time she laces up her skates. She said her son had to help her on the ice the first time she played.
“But it’s good to challenge yourself,” said Watschke, 49. “And it keeps you young, and I think it’s made me quite humble sitting in the stands watching my son play, because it is so much harder than it even looks.”
Several of the Motherpuckers are, indeed, mothers. And several are “hockey moms,” whose kids play the game.
“As moms, it’s easy to shout from the stands at our kids,” said Lisa Consie, 44, who grew up downhill skiing in Biwabik, because there was no girls hockey at her high school on the Iron Range.
“But when you’re on the ice, telling them to skate faster, now we understand. We’re trying to learn a little bit more about the game and understand more about what our kids are going through.”
Notaro’s daughter has helped her learn to stickhandle. She tapes her stick. She even determined her mom is a lefty. “She’s on my side,” Notaro said.
The first year the group formed they had 40 skaters. The next year, the number of players doubled. This year they capped it at 60 to keep practices manageable.
They play once a week outdoors, and last year began reserving some indoor ice time because of the unusually warm winter.
They only play among themselves. “Our joke we like to say is we kick our own ass,” said Klyn.
And they come from all walks of life. Rines owns a dog grooming business. There are health care professionals, professors, a firefighter, a writer. Klyn teaches middle school computer science and coaches robotics.
“And I love that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, I can fall down and I can fail and I can get back up,” said Klyn. “It’s just pure joy. I think I laugh more here than at any other space in my life.”
After the scrimmage, Klyn gathers the players in a circle on the ice. After having everyone do a set of planks, she tells the team members on their way out, “I want you to find four skaters, and tell them to have an excellent Monday.”
Stuart Getty lingers on the ice to cool off. They first learned about the Motherpuckers in an article that said the team was open to women, nonbinary and trans people.
“I use they-them pronouns. I’m nonbinary. And so I reached out to them and said, ‘Hey, my name’s Stuart. I’d love to learn how to play hockey. What do you guys think?’”
They had recently moved from California to Duluth, and worried they would not be welcomed.
“Instead, they have been amazingly inclusive,” Getty said.
Getty recalled the first practice of the year, when players took turns explaining why they were part of the Motherpuckers.
“I literally teared up,” Getty said. Some said “I couldn’t play because I didn’t have money.” For others, their “parents said ‘no’ to hockey,” or “they said I was a girl, so I couldn’t.” Others played, but quit, because it got too competitive and wasn’t fun anymore. There’s just all these stories of people where hockey said ‘no’ to them, and this team says ‘Yes.’”
Which kind of sums up the Motherpuckers. They support one another while challenging themselves to do something really hard — learning a sport that can be extremely intimidating to learn as an adult, especially in a state where many kids learn to play before they’re in kindergarten.
“One of the things I’m trying to do is to battle my own fear of aging by trying some scary things,” said Adeline Wright, 47, who owns a hair salon in Duluth.
“And there’s a little spot for all of us on this team, which feels really cool.”
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