How two 12-year-old girls, with an assist from the Flyers, managed to save their local ball hockey rink

Growing up in Maine, Garnet Hathaway scuffed many wood floors playing ball hockey with his brother.

Anthony Richard played ball hockey in leagues, at school, and outside his home in Canada. It is where his dream of playing in the NHL started.

“Sometimes my neighbor would think I was crazy because I was doing crazy stuff, like mimicking I was winning the Stanley Cup and stuff like that,” Richard said before he was loaned from the Flyers back to Lehigh Valley. “That’s where my passion for hockey grew. It’s not so much on the ice, because we [were] kind of just playing, but it’s outside [with] all the imagination.”

The 27-year-old Quebec native will still take on his 33-year-old brother, Michael, before family dinners in the summer. But Anthony Richard stopped playing competitively when he turned pro in ice hockey, despite his province housing the first pro ball hockey league, the Ligue Nationale de Hockey Balle, since 2021.

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“I stopped playing because it’s too competitive for me in the summer. And I’m a competitive person, so if I played, it’s 100%, and I’ll get a little heated out there,” Richard said with a laugh.

He may be past his organized ball hockey days, but if Richard is ever looking for a spot to work on his game for those brotherly battles, he could head about 40 minutes south of Allentown to Gilbertsville.

On a warm fall day in October, a cheer went up in the small town located in Montgomery County. Liz Crouthamel had just scored in triple overtime for Gritty’s Girls, delivering them the championship in the first-ever All Women’s & Girls’ Ball Hockey Tournament.

It’s a moment the tournament’s organizer, Pick Up Sticks Hockey, a grassroots hockey organization focused on positive and supportive community play and efforts to grow the game of hockey, did not think would happen.

A year earlier, the rink Crouthamel, playing alongside her 7-year-old daughter, Penny, and the tournament’s opening goal scorer, Delaynie Coccia-Cain, played on was almost lost.

In October 2023, Kate Van Druff wanted to start a pickup “dek hockey” group for mothers and kids at the New Hanover Community Park; her preteen daughter, Natalie, played the sport — a variation of ice hockey that is played in sneakers with an orange ball and a floating blue line. The only problem was the dek had one goal and, when she reached out to the township to offer a second net as a donation, she was told they were planning to convert the rink into pickleball courts.

Natalie Van Druff and her friend, Lilly Walter, both now 12 years old, set the wheels in motion to save the rink. They organized a petition that garnered more than 900 signatures and attended the township’s recreation committee meeting to speak up that November — still in their gear from a pickup game at the rink. Their voraciousness and love of the sport spearheaded the town keeping the rink.

“This dek can be here for many generations, for kids that want to learn how to play hockey, that have it near them,” Lilly Walter told The Inquirer in February. “And they can learn how to play, make friends, and learn how to win and lose. This dek can be around for 50 years if people keep taking good care of it.”

The problem was that people hadn’t been taking care of it. While they had fought to save their beloved rink, it desperately needed repairs. The asphalt had a large crack down the middle, and the playing surface was surrounded by a chain-link fence. Both create less-than-ideal conditions for playing the sport safely and properly.

So, once again, Natalie and Lilly took charge. The girls presented a plan to three council members at the New Hanover Township municipal building. The proposal included laying down a smooth tile surface and adding a scoreboard and boards. The girls used the renovated ball hockey rink in Gloucester Township, redesigned as part of a partnership with the Flyers in 2021, as inspiration.

Then the Flyers found out.

In June, with the assistance of Hathaway and Gritty, Flyers Charities surprised the girls in Voorhees with a $200,000 check to help renovate the rink. The donation covered new flooring, boards, and hockey nets and the construction of benches and penalty boxes.

“It was amazing even to meet the girls, just for how much hard work they put in,” Hathaway recently told The Inquirer. “The logistics of bringing it to a town meeting, to get a proposal to save a hockey rink that they loved and enjoyed, was great. They’re on track to do amazing things in the world beyond this. So I was glad to see them put the hard work in and get rewarded for it, but also be able to save an area that they love and spend a lot of time at.”

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On Aug. 12, the grand opening of The Rink at New Hanover Community Park showed off the hard work Natalie and Lilly put in. There were new boards with yellow kick plates and benches — just like the Wells Fargo Center where the Flyers play — and gray tiled flooring that can withstand whatever the weather may bring. The gray floor mimics an ice hockey rink with bright white faceoff circles and, of course, orange lines and faceoff dots.

“I want to grow the game and get more people involved in hockey because I feel like hockey is one of the best sports,” Natalie Van Druff said last month. “You don’t really need experience to start, and, for dek hockey, you don’t need balance or anything.”

And, a few weeks ago under a bright blue sky, they brought together more than 40 women and girls for a one-day ball hockey tournament at their new rink. Split into four teams — Gritty’s Girls, Purple Vampires, Black Ninjas, and NHT Whitehawks — each team played two preliminary games and at least one playoff game.

“It’s fun, especially because it’s a girls‘ tournament, and that’s how it all started, [with] girls’ pickup,” said Lilly Walter, who played in the tournament. “Some players have never played before, others have, and it’s great that they’ve decided to play today.”

Natalie Van Druff did not play because of injury but was the junior tournament director. Both girls also play ice hockey.

Following a free kids’ ball hockey clinic, the women and girls of all ages and skill levels hit the dek to battle it out.

There were young girls, like 7-year-old Penny — the tournament’s MVP — just starting their love of the sport. And there were women like Jennifer Gayle, Jen Corsilli, and Lorraine Anderson, each of whom has represented the United States on the international stage. Anderson, a grandmother of three, came out of retirement to play in the tournament. During her playing career, she participated in three International Street & Ball Hockey Federation Masters World Championships for the United States’ red team and won Most Valuable Defenseman in 2016 in Alberta and a bronze medal in 2018 in Bermuda. Corsilli, who can play forward or defense, was a member of the red team at the 2022 World Masters Championship team that played in the Czech Republic.

“I just played against a 13-year-old goalie who saved most of my shots,” said Kat Helling, a four-time medalist who helped lead USA Ball Hockey to titles at the 2022 and 2024 World Ball Hockey Championships — the first gold medals for the women’s program.

“So that’s really great for the future, right? Because in five, six years, those will be the people who will be on the U.S. team, and can make the program even more competitive — and so we can always hang there with Canada. So it’s really good. [The rink] will definitely help to get more people to play [ball hockey], and then that provides more depth for us in the U.S. team, too.”

Ball hockey may not be an Olympic sport — yet — but it brings together communities and provides opportunities to travel the globe. A cheaper alternative — although helmets, shin pads, and gloves are always recommended — the game has the same X’s and O’s as ice hockey and teaches the same lessons of responsibility, teamwork, and sportsmanship.

It was something Kate Van Druff, Natalie’s mom and one of the founders of PUSH, alongside Heather Walter and Alexis Tarantino, saw during the tournament.

“One of my favorite things was seeing brand new players playing alongside Team USA girls and elite ball hockey players, who were offering real-time coaching to hockey moms, hockey daughters, hockey girlfriends, everyone who came together to just enjoy the day, and the positive energy and spirit of hockey!” Van Druff said via text.

Now the group hopes to expand their grassroots efforts further — and they’ll get a little help from the NHL. PUSH also was created for kids who want to play hockey but don’t have or can’t afford their own gear. According to NHL.com, in early August, the league pledged to donate equipment, including goalie gear, for young players locally.

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“One of the things that I get to do alongside my team is we continue to invest in ways where we can just grow the game,” NHL vice president of community development and growth Jeff Scott told NHL.com. “We want to grow the game so that everyone has an opportunity to play, regardless of where you come from, where you live, how much money you may have or not have in your pocket.”

And while Lilly and Natalie have saved their rink and brought the game to so many in the Gilbertsville area, they also have served as inspiration beyond the new white dasher boards that line the rink. After assisting the girls, Flyers Charities started Rink Revive (the application process for 2024 is now closed) to identify local projects and provide funding and resources to grow the game, whether through financial assistance, equipment, rink repairs, programming, or coaching assistance.

“It’s just amazing that we inspired them and that they’re going to help more communities to get more people involved in hockey,” said Lilly Walter. “It’s just amazing to know that more people will get to have the love of hockey.”

Indeed. And that is something to be thankful for.