STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK. It's the height of hockey season, so we're going to listen to a team in Minnesota with a spirit that matches its name. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Kraker takes on this great challenge of correct pronunciation.
DAN KRAKER, BYLINE: OK, listen close, because the name of this team is appropriate for public radio.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Let's go, Motherpuckers.
KRAKER: That's right - the Motherpuckers. Yes, with a P. There are a handful of like-minded clubs that share the name across the country. This one is based in Duluth.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE BLOWING)
KRAKER: At a recent scrimmage at an outdoor neighborhood rink, the temperature was in the single digits, but Julie Flotten barely noticed.
JULIE FLOTTEN: I don't even pay attention to the cold. It's just like being a kid again 'cause you're just playing.
KRAKER: Flotten is 54. She's an oncology nurse in Duluth. She skated a little bit as a kid but never played hockey. Then last year, she found the Motherpuckers.
FLOTTEN: Everyone's so welcoming, right? So - and I feel like it's rare to have a community like that as adults, people willing to learn something new and be silly and be vulnerable.
(SOUNDBITE OF ICE SKATES SCRAPING)
KRAKER: Some more experienced players fly across the ice, but others are still wobbly on their skates.
UNIDENTIFIED HOCKEY PLAYER #1: Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED HOCKEY PLAYER #2: (Shouting) Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED HOCKEY PLAYER #3: (Shouting) Oh.
KRAKER: And then two players collide and crash to the ice. They get to their knees, make sure they're OK and then hug each other, laughing. One of them, Deanna Notaro, proudly shows off her jersey.
DEANNA NOTARO: This is jersey No. 53 because I started hockey when I was 53 years old.
KRAKER: This is only Notaro's fourth practice.
NOTARO: I'm what Motherpuckers was made for. I have a lot to work on, but it makes it challenging and fun. And I have a lot of good mentors around me.
KRAKER: One of whom is Kimberly Rines, also 53.
KIMBERLY RHINES: Nobody says, you know, that you shouldn't be here or that you're not good enough. And at my age, that doesn't happen very often, where you can kind of start something from scratch, never having done it before, and still feel like you belong.
KRAKER: Rhines and many others are truly mothers. Many have kids who play hockey and wanted to learn the game themselves. Forty-two-year-old Liesa Klyn started the Duluth team a couple years ago after learning to play at a Motherpuckers club outside Chicago. There are professors and designers, firefighters and hairstylists. Sixty members play once a week outdoors, just among themselves.
LIESA KLYN: I love that, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Like, I can fall down, and I can fail, and I can get back up, and it's not important. It's just pure joy, so much laughing. I think I laugh more here than at any other space in my life.
UNIDENTIFIED HOCKEY PLAYER #4: Go, go, go, go.
KRAKER: After practice, Stuart Getty lingers on the ice to cool off. They learned about the Motherpuckers in an article that said the team was open to anyone who wanted to play women's hockey.
STUART GETTY: And I use they/them pronouns. I'm nonbinary. And so I reached out to them and said, I'd love to learn how to play hockey. What do you guys think? And they were like, heck, yeah. We said welcome to all, so come on down. 'Cause, like, I look real gay (laughter), and I came from California. And I was like, oh, God, they're going to hate me. And they have been amazingly inclusive.
KRAKER: Getty, who's 43, says a lot of their teammates wanted to play hockey when they were younger. Many were told girls couldn't play. For some who did, it got so competitive it wasn't fun anymore.
GETTY: There's just, like, all these stories of people where hockey said no to them. And this team says yes.
KRAKER: Which kind of sums up the Motherpuckers. They support one another while challenging themselves to do something really hard, and they have a lot of fun doing it.
(CHEERING)
KRAKER: For NPR News, I'm Dan Kraker in Duluth.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHUCK JOHNSON'S "ACROSS WHITE OAK MOUNTAIN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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