She waits right next to the locker room, dressed in full hockey gear. The Carmel Icehounds Blue team is about to start its daily pre-practice talk, but they are one player short. Then, a coach opens the locker room door to let her know she can come inside. In a sport that oozes testosterone, junior Ali Sinnett is the first girl in three years to make the Carmel Icehounds hockey team.

“She doesn’t like to be treated any differently. She just wants to be one of the guys. When I’m addressing

the team and I’m like, ‘Hey boys… and Ali,’ she hates it,” Andrew Norris, Icehounds Blue Team head coach, said. “But you know what? She deserves to be on the team, and she deserves to be respected and she’s now one of the guys. She’s Ali Sinnett and she’s awesome.”

After one week of tryouts, Sinnett became a defenseman for the Icehounds Blue team, the junior varsity hockey team. Sinnett has played hockey for over 10 years, but said her motivation to play college hockey was what drove her to try out for the CHS men’s hockey team.

“I feel like being with people who want to take [hockey] somewhere and they want to keep going with it, that’ll help a lot, and they’ll want to play harder and they’ll want to challenge themselves; being with people who want the same thing as you, you’ll all bring yourselves up and work each other to your best,” Sinnett said.

Sinnett is part of the growing number of females participating in hockey. In 2015, the National Women’s Hockey League, which went under in 2007, will be revived. Although the league will only contain four teams, it represents the growth of women’s hockey.

Although girls on boys’ teams are unusual, the experience has been a positive one for teammate and sophomore Brian Schnelver, who said he was impressed with Sinnett’s skating and passing ability.

“Girls are just as strong as guys and she broke that barrier that had been there for several years and I would like to more girls try and go against those Carmel guys,” Schnelver said.

Having a female on an all-male team does create an unusual set of circumstances, such as Sinnett having her own locker room or Norris, before pre-practice speeches, having to check the boy’s locker room before letting her in to make sure everyone is appropriately dressed. On the ice too, Sinnett said men’s hockey is vastly different than women’s hockey.

“In girls’[hockey], you have no checking, but pretty much everything else is fair game like elbows – they don’t call a lot of crosschecks. But guys hockey, since you can check, they’ll call that,” Sinnett said. “So it feels a lot cleaner, honestly, and girls don’t skate as fast, don’t make as good of passes, it just feels a lot more intelligent with guy’s hockey.”

The locker room is a big adjustment for Sinnett as well. According to Norris and  Schnelver, hockey is a foul-mouthed sport inside the locker room. While both of them said Sinnett has adapted well, the difference between her previous experiences and her current situation is extreme.

“[The boys] are so weird; it’s so different. Girls locker rooms are all nice, like, ‘Hey what did you do today?’ and guys are all bashing on each other and lots and lots of innuendo,” Sinnett said.

Although she said it is a weird situation for her and the transition was difficult, Sinnett said she has no regrets about trying out for the men’s hockey team. And while she may just want to be “one of the guys,” Norris said her inclusion on the team could pave the way for others to join as well.

Norris said, “I think Ali, for anyone who’s maybe interested in playing in the Carmel program, maybe she’s kind of paving a way for these people to come out, and say, ‘Hey, you know what? Maybe I can give it a shot with the guys.’ We have open try outs every single year. I do not think twice about it. It is not a gender-based sport; it is a talent based sport.”