The Philadelphia Liberties showcase the growth of girls’ hockey locally: ‘It’s a beautiful game’

On the Flyers’ practice rink in Voorhees, there’s a sign just above the penalty box advertising the Philadelphia Liberties.

You’d be forgiven if you missed it, considering there’s a massive poster of Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim right next to it. But the Liberties, an all-girls youth hockey program, share some of the wall real estate with the Flyers, just like they share the same ice.

The Liberties started two years ago and are based out of the Flyers Training Center. The program held tryouts this past spring, and now has 25 girls, ranging from 12 to 17, and split into two teams by age and skill level.

With such a wide age range, the Liberties don’t play in a league, but instead have the freedom to build their own schedule, facing girls’ teams, boys’ teams, and coed teams generally from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and northern Virginia.

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They also can schedule special trips, like the one the team took in December — completely sponsored by the Flyers — to Washington, D.C., where they got to skate on the rink on the South Lawn of the White House.

“We do have to travel a lot, and practice a couple of times a week, and we do off ice, so it’s a commitment,” Liberties head coach Linda Rehmann told The Inquirer. “As the game grows and people appreciate it more and more, I think that we’re just going to bring more girls into it.”

Recently, the Liberties hosted their second annual invitational tournament, attracting teams from Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York to the Flyers’ practice arena. The Liberties’ younger team, 14U Liberties Orange, faced a team from Long Island.

Rehmann, who is originally from Ottawa, played college hockey at Cornell. She became involved with coaching hockey with her son’s team when he was young and jumped at the chance when she heard the Liberties were looking for a new coach this past year.

Rehmann had the chance to bring the Liberties to her alma mater earlier this month. The girls played on Lynah Rink, took a tour of the facilities, and watched the Cornell women, currently ranked eighth in the nation, beat St. Lawrence.

“Thirty years ago, I was at Cornell, and even though I had a tremendous experience, the men’s hockey and the women’s hockey were not treated equally. But now every opportunity that the men have, the women have,” Rehmann said. “All the facilities are exactly the same; there’s incredible parity. And as these new schools and new programs start up, that’s where they’re going to start. So I think that’s going to be really powerful.”

The Liberties will cap their season with another special trip to a tournament at Notre Dame, where they will get the opportunity to play on the Fighting Irish’s Division I facilities.

As a relatively new program, the Liberties are a product of the rapid growth of grassroots girls’ hockey in the region.

Some of the Liberties players got their start in the Flyers’ rookie program, which is a Learn to Play initiative for kids between the ages of 5 and 9. Since the high cost of hockey equipment can be a major obstacle for boys and girls looking to try the sport, the rookie program sign-up fee includes a free set of equipment for every participant.

“It feels like girls are starting to start younger, which is so critical,” Rehmann said. “You’ve got to develop your skating skills as young as possible. And it feels like if we can draw girls in, then that’s when they’re getting interested and sticking with it.”

The Liberties certainly aren’t the only program around. The Ed Snider Foundation has invested in girls’ hockey for years — two of their teams participated in the Liberties Invitational and the 14U team won its division. The Liberties are just another avenue for girls looking to increase their involvement in the sport.

“Youth sport and hockey is really more about developing people, good people. Hockey is a great opportunity to be able to do that,” Rehmann said. “We do a lot of things, just team building, supporting each other, and understanding actions and consequences and respect for the game and each other.”

Women’s hockey also is having a moment nationally, with the Professional Women’s Hockey League breaking attendance records for the sport. The University of Delaware recently announced it was starting a Division I women’s program.

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Rehmann said that a goal of the program is to have multiple teams and enough players to enter into leagues. From there, they want to help prepare their players to play for higher-level local programs like the Junior Flyers. The trips to Cornell and Notre Dame help show them what is possible beyond even that.

The Liberties’ general manager, Mark Wilk, said his daughter caught a Flyers game on TV once and asked him if girls could play, too. Now, she and her teammates are paying close attention to the PWHL. (While Philadelphia initially was considered for a PWHL team, it wasn’t included in the original six cities — though league board members have said that expansion is part of the league’s future.)

“The quality of women’s hockey and college women’s hockey is just so high now,” Rehmann said. “Honestly, for real hard-core fans, it’s a beautiful game. There’s no checking, but besides that, everything goes, so it’s a little bit of a more, I’m going to say, a more elegant game.

“I think for my girls to be able to watch college players and meet them and see what they’re doing, it’s just really inspirational because they see it’s within reach. This is something that could happen.”

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The 14U opener ended in a 3-0 loss to the Long Island team, but the Liberties were in good spirits afterward in their locker room. Rehmann asked who could come up with a positive to say about the game, and there was no shortage of answers.

“We played with good hockey sense.”

“We were first to the puck!”

“Didn’t retaliate ... much!”

“We stayed together.”

Like the team that shares their rink, the Liberties have their own postgame ritual — but instead of the Flyers’ dog mask, the player of the game gets a white construction helmet and a glittery dollar-sign chain to wear. The coaches agonize in the hallway after every game, saying they could come up with ten different players who deserve the honor on a given day.

As her teammates cheer, the Orange team’s goalie was bestowed the hat and chain at the center of the room. She stopped more than 30 shots during the game.

“I also try to stress to them that we’re not skyrocketing up like this,” Rehmann said. “It’s not always going to be easy. We’ve lost a lot of games, but we’ve won a lot of games. And we’ve had a lot of people had their first goals. ... Short term, we’re just building.”

After the postgame chat, several of the players headed down the hallway to another dressing room, about to get right back on the ice for another game with the older team.

With each team having three games scheduled that weekend, it’s a lot of hockey, but the girls are all in.

“I love working with these girls,” Rehmann said. “Many of them have only been playing for a couple years, but they just love it. Their passion for the game, their enthusiasm. ... Just to be taken seriously and be respected for what they do, they really take challenges on. It’s been a wonderful experience for me.”