Sports

Old Sport,
New Gender

Above left: Injured left-wing Jodi Berris.

Inset: Between the pipes: U-M goalie
Dana Aronson.

Women's hockey checks in at U-M.

LONNY GOLDSMITH
Staff Writer

T

he sport isn't new, but
thanks to the U.S. winning
Olympic gold, it has recent-
ly been thrust into the

limelight.
Although a club sport, women's ice
hockey is growing at the University of
Michigan. Trying to emerge from the
shadow cast by the wildly successful
U-M men's hockey team, the women
are seeking varsity status.
Five Jewish women, two of them
local residents, are hoping to further
the growth.
Jodi Berris, a freshman from West
Bloomfield High School, picked up
hockey at a clinic when she was a
fifth-grader.
"I loved playing, but was too little
to play in a checking league with the
guys," she said.

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1998

126

Berris took up the game again as a
high school junior, playing drop-in
hockey with friends.
"I knew U-M had a team when I
was looking at schools," she said.
"Academics came first when choosing,
but hockey was definitely a considera-
tion."
Berris was a well-rounded athlete at
WBHS, earning varsity letters in ten-
nis, skiing and soccer. She participated
in five JCC Maccabi Games from
1992-95, playing five sports (track,
table tennis, basketball, soccer and
tennis).
Unfortunately, her love of skiing
meant the end of her U-M hockey
season after playing 25 games as a left
winger on the third line.
While skiing in Utah over this past
semester break, she hurt her right
knee. What seemed innocent at the
time turned out to be a torn anterior
cruciate ligament and medial collateral

ligament.
"I'm hoping to have surgery next
month," Berris said. "The doctors told
me it would take six months of reha-
bilitation. I won't be able to do much
during the summer, but I'll be back in
time for next year."
Wolverine .netminder Dana Aron-
son, a product of Ann Arbor's Green-
hills High School, was drawn to hock-
ey from Canadian roots.
Born in Montreal, she grew up
watching hockey with her father, and
always wanted to learn to play.
"I learned how to skate when I
started playing last year," the sopho-
more said. "I figured goalie would be
interesting. I had nothing else to com-
pare it to, so I gave it a shot."
At Greenhills, Aronson played soft-
ball, basketball and volleyball, but is
glad she found hockey.
"It's the most fun I've ever had
playing a sport," she said. "It's frustrat-

ing at first, but when I got the hang of
it I got such a rush."
Aronson has started all the games
in goal this season and played as a
backup last year.
This season, the U-M stands at
.500 overall and are 4-3-3 in the
league. They are currently third in
the Central Collegiate Women's
Hockey Association behind Western
°I
Michigan and Ohio State and
ahead of Michigan State, Illinois
and Lake Forest College (Ill.) The
league playoffs are this weekend in
Chicago.
The other Jews on the team are:
Dana Goldberg, a defensewoman
from South Bend, Ind., Rebecca
LeLeiko, a defensewoman from Larch-
mont, N.Y., and Stacey Waxtan, a left' so
wing from Lakeville, Minn.
The problem with a sport at the
club level is that the athletes pay to
play, and no direct support is given
from the school. Hockey costs nearly
$500 a season, which includes dues,
ice time, officials and travel costs. The
athletes pay their own way to road
games for hotels, vans, gas and spend-
ing money.
"It's more relaxed than varsity, but -111
we'd still like it to be varsity," Berris
said. "If you have to miss a practice or
can't travel with the team on a week-
end road trip, it's all right" as a club
team.
According to team captain and club
president Meghan Green, many week-
ends this season have been spent on
the road.
"Ice time was really hard to get, so
almost every weekend we've been
gone," Green said.
Green attributes much of the team's
unity to the time spent together off
the ice. The women also participated
in campus intramural flag football,
basketball and soccer together.
Hopefully for the team, the season
will run until the end of March and 01
the national women's ice hockey tour-
nament in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Green hopes that the strong public
support of women's hockey at the
Olympics will translate into varsity •
status for her team.
"The Olympics were huge," she
said. "People got so excited by it and I
think that people will back it."
According to Green, Senior Associ- 111
ate Athletic Director Peggy Bradley-
Doppes, who's in charge of all
women's sports, is excited about the
possibility of women's hockey gaining
varsity status since it is a sport that is
on the rise.

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