Girls Hockey Day builds confidence, skill in local youngsters

Ohio native Brianne McLaughlin-Bittle has had an extraordinary hockey career.

Born on the west side of Cleveland, the goaltender left college as an NCAA record holder, was selected for Team USA to play in two different Olympic Games, and went on to become a professional champion before hanging up her gear.

McLaughlin-Bittle has gotten to experience some of coolest things in the world because of the sport ... but even if she hadn’t, hockey would have given her so much.

Looking back to the cold nights at the rink as a kid, many of them when she was the only girl at practice, McLaughlin-Bittle began to build a belief that she could do great things simply by taking the ice each and every day.

“When I look back to my younger years of playing, if I could pick one thing that I think helped me growing up, it’s that confidence,” she said. “Being out there, being the only girl but I’m still holding my own, that became my identity. (People would say), ‘That’s Brianne McLaughlin. She plays hockey. She’s a goalie.’ Everyone knew that about me.

“It was something I was good at. It made me confident. That went with me my whole life.”

McLaughlin-Bittle said that Saturday at the Blue Jackets annual Girls Hockey Day, presented by Bread Financial. The former Team USA standout served as an on-ice instructor as well as a panelist at the post-practice question-and-answer session – all while passing around her 2010 and ‘14 Olympic silver medals for the girls to see and even wear.

The girls showed their passion for the game on the ice and came prepared off of it, peppering McLaughlin-Bittle with questions about her career. And what became clear during the discussion is that while not all of the 60-plus girls aged 6 through 14 who took part in the 75-minute clinic will go on to become star players – though some likely will – all of them will have the chance to build strong bodies and minds through the sport of hockey.

So while the clinic was about getting better as a hockey player, there also was a much larger message at play. After the on-ice work and Q&A were over, Ruling Our eXperiences (ROX) – a Blue Jackets Foundation grant partner and Columbus-based nonprofit that aims to build confidence in young women – conducted an hourlong workshop for the girls aimed at creating self-belief and ties between the group.

“I think what is so cool about girls playing hockey is that you’re doing something that not a lot of girls do,” said Dr. Lisa Hinkelman, the founder and CEO of ROX. “You're stepping out of the box of what the world says girls are supposed to be and what they’re supposed to look like and act like and be good at.

“I think being strong and powerful is something that we should be celebrating in our girls, and the world is not always giving them that message. So I love the fact that hockey celebrates girls for being strong and powerful and not for what they look like.”

For Andee Cochren, Executive Director of the Blue Jackets Foundation and CBJ senior director of community development, it was another great day when it comes to encouraging the youth of Central Ohio to get on the ice. Removing barriers to the sport through such programs as Learn to Play, Get Out and Learn, and the Blue Jackets Hockey League is a pillar of the foundation – and those programs have become major conduits to introduce girls to hockey.

It’s clear that work is making an impact, especially when you consider how many of the participants in Saturday’s clinic hail from Central Ohio and have come through those programs.

“When we first started the clinic, we had about 60 girls on the ice, but they were coming in from the entire region,” Cochren said. “What I saw this time is that the kids that are on the ice have actually grown up coming up through our Blue Jackets programs designed to remove barriers from the game. That is what we are doing at the grassroots level to make sure there are development opportunities for girls in Central Ohio so they can stay in their own beds, stay with their own friends and play the game they love.”

While McLaughlin-Bittle grew up not in Central Ohio but northern Ohio in the western Cleveland suburb of Sheffield Village, her story shows just how far girls hockey has come in the Buckeye State. Her mother made her do a year of ballet as a tradeoff for following her brother into hockey, but it quickly became clear her true love was on the ice. She was the only girl at practices for much of her youth career and on her high school team at Elyria Catholic, then heard of an all-girls junior team known as the Ohio Flames.

From there, she realized the opportunity to continue her career at the college level was on the table, and she was able to go on to play four years at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, where she finished her career as the NCAA career saves leader.

As luck would have it, she completed her eligibility in the spring of 2009 and immediately had the chance to try out for the 2010 U.S. Olympic team, which she ultimately qualified for. McLaughlin-Bittle won silver medals for Team USA that year and in 2014, then spent two seasons in the fledgling pro National Women’s Hockey League. In her final game, she made 60 saves to push her Buffalo team to the NWHL’s Isobel Cup title in 2017 and was named the championship game MVP.

It’s an almost unbelievable story, in part because of the lack of infrastructure that was in place to help McLaughlin-Bittle make it to the top. Now, she has the unique ability to usher in an even bigger and better era of girls and women’s hockey as a teacher and instructor.

“I’m getting to the age now where some of the girls I coached when I was with the national team and coming to these events, they’re getting older and I’ll get a picture on Instagram or something that’s like, ‘Hey, do you remember me?’” she said. “I met a girl (Ava McNaughton, now the starting goaltender at the University of Wisconsin), it was her very first time ever putting goalie pads on, and now she’s playing at Wisconsin, and she played on the U-18 national team and I was coaching at the national team level, so we were both on the ice at the same time. I’ve known her since she was 5.

“It’s so cool. We’re in such a cool spot, me and all my old teammates to be able to do what we did, and also this and see them all the way through their path.”