Amanda Brawley and Olivia Gonzalez, the two women players on the NOVA co-ed ice hockey team./ Photo by Arch Scurlock

Olivia Gonzalez and Amanda Brawley are the two Northern Virginia Community College women ice hockey players who make the NOVA team co-ed. One thing to know about these two women is that they love to play hockey.

I spoke with these two women before a recent practice.

This is Gonzalez’s second year playing. She originally wanted to come out as a manager, because she had heard that she’d be able to skate with the team during practices. Coach Barrett Haga had other ideas for her, as he asked her to try out for the team. Gonzalez decided that she wanted to take the opportunity to improve her skills.

“Skating with guys was definitely a challenge. So that’s how it happened. Before I knew it, I was on the team.”

It turned out that she and another woman both made the cut.

She was surprised by how welcoming the team was about having a girl on their team at first.  “They didn’t give me a hard time if I messed up during a game,” she said. And they gave her constructive advice. “They would help me out.”

In Gonzalez’s second year on the team, she was selected for the Captain’s Committee.

Playing against other male teams, she has experienced little negative reaction from those players. One time she was knocked down by a male defenseman, but she overheard one of his teammates mildly rebuking him and saying “Oh, she’s a girl.” One other time when she was stationed next to the goal, an opponent asked what she was doing there, but she didn’t know whether he was referring to her being a female or being an opponent.

Perhaps part of her opponent’s neutral reaction may be due to her not going around banging into opposing players.

Gonzalez explained why she likes hockey. “It’s so unique. You have to learn to walk again on the ice. I like how it’s cold. Hitting was new to me when I came to NOVA. It’s not the main reason I like hockey.”

Other sports she has played include softball and rugby in high school.

Gonzalez first played on the T.C. Williams High School girls’ ice hockey team when she was 14. Her team had to play Maryland schools as no Virginia schools had girls’ teams. Since then, she has played on both non-hitting men’s and women’s recreational league teams.

She has never been injured playing with guys, though she had fallen on her knees on her high school team. At T. C. Williams High School she played a defensive position, but partly due to her relatively small size in relation to the male players, she became a forward right wing on offense at NOVA.

She hopes to play at her next school or in a recreational league.

Gonzalez is studying business administration at the college’s Alexandria campus and hopes to study economics in the future. She received one of the hockey team’s academic achievement awards last year. She will graduate this spring and has applied to University of Virginia, College of William and Mary and George Mason University. She works in an office part-time.

Gonzalez has not decided on a definite career, but thinks she would like to work in an economics or finance-related field, perhaps as a teacher, for which she would need additional education.

In her spare time, she likes to read and paint for relaxation.

Her parting words: “Girl Power!”Amanda Brawley joined the team as a forward in the spring semester and was undoubtedly a welcome companion on the team for Gonzalez.

She served as a manager for the team in the fall semester while she recovered from summer knee surgery for a hockey injury incurred several years earlier.

“I wanted to stay in hockey because, like, it’s my life. It’s basically what I do every weekend… I wanted to be a manager first to make sure all the guys were cool.”

In regards to playing against the other male teams, she said, “The other teams try to whack me, try to get into my head… I mean the guys on the team. I know a few jokes. I don’t really take it personally.”

She enjoys just being around the guys the most. “There is always something going on with one of them that makes it funny and memorable every time that I see them.”

Brawley could be termed a hockey fanatic. She started playing hockey in the second or third grade under the direction of her father. She has played in a number of leagues in the metropolitan area and at Ashburn and played men’s hockey last year. On Sundays, she helps with a special needs team at Kettler Capitals Iceplex in Arlington, a team started by her father a few years ago.

She played at goalie in lacrosse last year and played it one season before that.

Brawley attended to Parkview High School. At NOVA she is taking mostly English classes in order to be a communications major and is doing some social work at NOVA’s Loudoun campus. She would like to continue studying communications and doing social work in the future.

Next year she plans to attend Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania.

By: Arch Scurlock

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