LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Paralympic Winter Games start this march in Italy. Athletes will compete in six sports, including para ice hockey. But women who play are looking ahead to 2030, when they hope to compete in their own category. They recently inched closer to that goal with the first-ever women's Para Ice Hockey World Championships. Emily Chen-Newton reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLADES SCRAPING ON ICE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yep.
EMILY CHEN-NEWTON: Para ice hockey is similar to wheelchair rugby - fast-paced and physical but on the ice and, of course, not in wheelchairs. In modified sleds on top of skate blades, athletes propel themselves across the rink using two short hockey sticks capped with ice picks.
RACHEL STEFFEN: Uh-uh. Try again, girl. Get up.
CHEN-NEWTON: That's Rachel Steffen, practicing with her local team on her home ice in Cincinnati, Ohio, after competing at the world championships in Slovakia in August. She and Team USA took home the gold, but a women's category in the Paralympics is what they really want.
STEFFEN: It's a great feeling to know that we're so close and we have reached so many milestones.
CHEN-NEWTON: This event was the most significant milestone yet, with more global participation than ever before, which is crucial for paralympic inclusion. Steffen joined the women's national team just this year. So she's grateful to those who've been forging this path since before she even started skating.
STEFFEN: People who've been on the team for years and years and years. And learning their stories and how long it's taken to just get a championship, it's crazy.
CHEN-NEWTON: One of those women is Peggy Assink, who, now in her 40s, represents Canada. She started when she was just 11 years old.
PEGGY ASSINK: Back in the '80s and '90s, there was definitely no pathway for women.
CHEN-NEWTON: Though this sport is technically open to all genders, women are rarely selected for paralympic teams. Assink points out that hockey is the only large team winter sport in the Paralympics, and so it plays a role in the overall gender imbalance of the competition. In the last Winter Games, only about a quarter of athletes were women.
ASSINK: Because para ice hockey has eight teams that are mostly made up of men, and what we'd really like to be doing is making that much closer to 50%. And one of the best ways to do that is to really be including eight national teams full of women included in Winter Paralympics.
CHEN-NEWTON: It'll be a big jump because only three women have ever played on Paralympic hockey ice. One of those is Lena Schroeder of Team Norway. Her ability to read the game, she says, is part of how she meshed with the men in the 2018 games.
LENA SCHROEDER: They gave more checks than me, but I could have this overview and control how our line would respond. So we kind of complemented each other, I would say.
CHEN-NEWTON: In this game so dependent on upper-body strength and mass, men do have an advantage, especially when it comes to hockey's signature move - bodychecking.
SCHROEDER: In stand-up regular ice hockey, there are regulations as to how much the female players can actually check each other. But that rule doesn't apply in para.
CHEN-NEWTON: So it's full contact, she says.
STEFFEN: Oh, it's a T-bone. I'm sorry.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You're fine.
CHEN-NEWTON: Rachel Steffen back on the rink, apologizing for one of the only moves not allowed.
STEFFEN: Ah.
CHEN-NEWTON: As practice wraps up, she says her teammates are like family.
STEFFEN: Whoo.
CHEN-NEWTON: And now she's imagining not only herself, but other little hockey sisters making it to the Paralympics one day.
STEFFEN: Like, I see all the girls that are just now starting and because since we're so close, I could get to see them also in the Paralympics one day. And that makes me so happy.
CHEN-NEWTON: For NPR News, I'm Emily Chen-Newton in Cincinnati.
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