I grew up hating hockey culture, but as an adult, I fell in love with playing the game

This First Person column is the experience of Jennifer LoveGrove, who lives in Toronto. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ .

In high school, I dreaded the corridor that led to our cafeteria: The Jock Hall. There the lighting was dimmest and teachers were rarely nearby. Large, loud and leering teenage hockey players lined the walls that made up our gauntlet, bellowing out a rating at each girl who walked past, commenting on her bra size and vividly describing the things they'd like to do to those who had no choice but to walk past. 

Girls like me.

In our small southern Ontario town of Dunnville, hockey was the religion and its players were put on a pedestal. Though I refused to let it show, I was afraid of them; I hated hockey and the bullying it represented.      

Years later, on the cusp of 30 and immersed in a different life in Toronto, I was struggling. I was single, depressed and felt like I didn't fit in anywhere — not at my new art gallery job, not in the urban literary community and definitely not in my hometown. I liked living in Toronto, but I craved connection. 

Unafraid to try new things, I knew I needed a change, but I was waiting for a sign. Then, a photographer acquaintance mentioned a co-ed hockey tournament he was playing in and that his band was performing afterward.      

"Every team has to have an artistic contribution," he said. 

He told me about the Good Times Hockey League of the Arts, a gender-inclusive community hockey league geared towards artists and like-minded people. 

I was intrigued — hockey and art seemed incompatible to me. Creative folks, women, men who didn't fit the misogynistic mould — they weren't part of the hockey world I'd grown up around. It