Girls From Storied Brick Hockey Club Aiming For National Tournament

BRICK, NJ -- On an unseasonably warm day when many teenage girls were thinking about the beach, Erin Campbell was thinking about something else.

"I'm here every day," the 16-year-old from Jackson said as her Brick Hockey Club teammates skated nearby, passing and shooting over and over on the ice at Ocean Ice Palace. "I love being here."

Despite the spring air, Campbell and her teammates on the Brick U16AA girls squad are focused on a cold pursuit: the team will be playing for the Atlantic Amateur Hockey Championship this weekend in West Chester, Pa., with a berth in the USA Hockey national championships on the line.

The team, which has been together for a year, consists of players from as far north as Woodbridge and as far south as Cape May. For some, it is the first time they've played on an all-girls ice hockey team; others, including goalie Katelyn Brezniak from Toms River, have been playing on all-girls teams for a few years.

"The game flows better," said McKenna Naumchik, 15, who travels to Brick from Somers Point with her father, Chris, who is one of the team's coaches. "I never had the kind of relationship with the boys that I do with them (the girls)."

"It's great because we have a bond," said Tabitha Franceschini, 16, of Brick, whose father, Jay, is another coach.

"When we go to the locker room, we can talk about makeup and boys," said Campbell, who also is a member of the boys junior varsity hockey team at Jackson Liberty. "You can't do that with the boys."

On the ice, "it's a completely different game," Franceschini said.

In club ice hockey, girls typically play on boys teams until they are middle-school age, said Cindy Toye, who is the Brick team's head coach. At that age, as kids go through puberty, the physical differences between the boys and girls make it more difficult for the girls to compete, especially because the boys' game includes body checking -- where one player hits another, typically with the goal of knocking the puck out of their possession. Body checking is not permitted at the younger levels by USA Hockey, the governing body of youth ice hockey; it is only permitted for players ages 13 and older.

"The girls' game is much more of a finesse game," Toye said. Because checking is not permitted, she said, the girls will try more things with stick-handling because there isn't the fear of being hit.

Toye has personal experience playing the game and comes from one of the prime hockey teams in Brick Township: her grandfather is Bob Auriemma, the coach of the Brick Township High School ice hockey team and the founder of the Brick Hockey Club. Her brothers, Bobby and Dan Acropolis, both starred for the Dragons in high school. Toye also played for the Brick High School team, becoming the first girl to score in a New Jersey high school game. Toye went on to play on the women's ice hockey team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she was a second-team all-American.

Toye, whose daughter, Kyley, is a member of the team, said she and others approached the Brick Hockey Club about starting a girls program two years ago, because there were not many options for girls to continue past the U14 level.

"There were a couple of (girls) teams up north," she said. "We wanted to give them an option that was local."

So the club held tryouts and currently has a U19 team and the U16 team, she said.

The club was very supportive, Toye said, and they received help from Donna Guariglia, who was the president (and is a founder) of the Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey Association, the league where the Brick girls' teams play.

The Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey Association was founded in 2004 with the goal of increasing opportunities for girls and women to play ice hockey in USA Hockey's Atlantic division.

"She (Guariglia) and Alex Depalma, the Brick Hockey Club coaching director, along with the entire Brick Hockey Club executive board, were instrumental in getting the (Brick) program off the ground and running," she said. The interest in the girls program continues to grow, she said.

"We would have more (teams) if we had the ice," she said.

Ice hockey participation overall has been growing and the Brick club has had to rent ice time in other towns because there simply aren't enough hours available at the Ocean Ice Palace to accommodate all the teams, Toye said.

The girls' game, however, has been growing by leaps and bounds since women's ice hockey held its first IIHF Women’s World Championship in 1990. Fueled in part by the success of the U.S. women's Olympic ice hockey team, which took gold in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, as well as gold at the last three world championships, the number of girls and women playing the game has grown from just over 6,300 in 1990 to nearly 70,000 for the 2014-15 season, according to USA Hockey. Of those 70,000, there are 3,000 in the Atlantic district, which encompasses New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware.

"The amount of girls playing in the state is exploding," Jay Franceschini said. Many of the girls have brothers who play the game, so there is less reticence among parents to allow their daughters to play. His daughter, Tabitha, plays on an all-girls team at The Gunnery School, but started playing because she watched her brother, Jason.

"I wanted to be like him," Tabitha Franceschini said. The all-girls teams give her the ability to keep playing the game she loves because she is smaller than many of the players on the ice -- too small to play on a boys team, she said.

Erin Campbell, who plays on the junior varsity boys hockey team at Jackson Liberty, said she started playing because her brother was playing.

"I was forced," she said with a laugh, "but I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Brick team is playing the West Chester Quakers in a double-elimination format. The first game is at 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, with Game 2 at 3 p.m. Sunday. If a third game is needed, it is set for Monday at 11:15 a.m. They head into the district championship on a bye earned by winning the division with an 8-1-1 record. Overall the team is 18-10-3, having logged hundreds of miles traveling to tournaments to play teams from all over and build the team's experience, abilities and confidence.

Playing for the district championship and a berth at the USA Hockey nationals in Barre, Vermont, at the end of March is important to the girls. Keeping the excitement and nerves in check is the key for the team, said Brezniak, 15, who understands the pressure: two years ago she was the goalie for a Princeton girls team that went to a 13-round shootout before claiming victory on Brezniak's game-winning save.

"That's my favorite memory," she said.

"We're definitely feeling the pressure. You just have to think that in the end, the world is going to carry on if you lose," said Brezniak, has a .963 save percentage and a .73 goals-against average with three shutouts between the pipes for Brick.

"I enjoy the pain" that goes with having a 6-ounce hunk of rubber traveling 60 mph right at her, Brezniak said of playing goalie. She's also inspired by her sister, Sara, who is a netminder for the Toms River North varsity.

At the same time, "I like being the backbone of the team," Brezniak said.

"She is a key for us this weekend," Toye said.

Brezniak said she thinks her team is up for the challenge.

"I see more motivation to be playing their best," she said.

If the girls advance to nationals, they will be just the fourth team in the more than 50-year history of the Brick Hockey Club to do so, Jay Franceschini said.

"Playing in a game like this is really exciting," Erin Campbell said. "In group chat we've been really riling each other up."

"In the back of my mind I've thought about this," said McKenna Naumchik, who got her start playing street hockey. "But I've never been this close. Seeing the best competition I've ever seen, trying to keep our play to other teams' levels is exciting."

"The father-daughter aspect is tremendous," Chris Naumchik said. "To go through this with her is a privilege."

The games will be broadcast on FASTHockey.com, according to USA Hockey.

The team's roster: Kate Becker, Brick; Sarah Braslavets, Englishtown; Katelyn "Kat" Brezniak, Toms River; Cassandra Campbell, Point Pleasant; Erin Campbell, Jackson; Tabitha Franceschini, Brick; Sarah Gutt, Middletown; Caitlyn Keenan, Howell; Karli Lafferty, Cape May; Sabrina Madsen, Allentown; Lucia McGuire-Pettersen, Jackson; McKenna Naumchik, Somers Point; Amber Spearnock, Woodbridge; Kyley Toye, Brick; Alexandra Urbanski, Jackson. Coaching Staff: Cindy Toye, Jay Francescini, Chris Naumchik, Aimee Billington.

(Photos by Karen Wall)