Natálie Mlýnková

A steady stream of people is heading toward the arena. The stands are slowly filling up, and soon the place will be packed to the rafters again. It’s a big event for the whole city, and once again, I’ll be part of it. Just the way I like it. Just the way that makes me happy.

Only a few moments left before my time comes. Tighten my skates, get ready. The moment I appear in the entrance leading onto the ice, the crowd reacts. All eyes from the stands turn in my direction.

Then I step onto the ice. Wave to the crowd.

And…

Nobody, not even my teammates, has the slightest idea that it’s me.

That ram mascot skating around the ice at Zlín’s arena shortly before the men’s team hit the ice for their Czech Extraliga game is Natka. Their teammate.

After practice, just like I always did, I’d slip out of our shared locker room to give the boys some privacy. We’d grown up together since we were little, but now that we were all slowly losing the last traces of childhood, both physically and mentally, it makes sense for me not to be around for absolutely everything that went on in the room. So I’d take my schoolwork into an empty locker room, where my mascot costume was waiting for me.

The funny thing is, most of the guys genuinely had no idea that I am the one inside the ram costume during the games. And I loved it that way. This was my world, my little zone. Nobody cared that I was a girl who loved hockey. I was simply a natural part of an Extraliga game night, exactly where I wanted to be anyway. Watching the team composed of our local heroes. The years between two championship titles were my era.

I’d been going to every game since I was little. Sometimes I’d be in the supporters’ section, sometimes up in the stands with my parents. And later, I’d also join my teammates in clearing the ice during commercial breaks.

Those were the days… We didn’t have any special equipment. They’d just hand us regular brooms and snow shovels, and we’d have to make do. But most importantly, we got to be right next to our idols, skating past them. Everyone fought for a spot on the ice-cleaning crew. Everyone wanted in. But as the years went by, the excitement started to fade. The guys generally began finding other interests.

Not me.

So when I was offered the chance to try being the mascot, I jumped at it and never looked back. I absolutely loved it from day one. And there was even a little something in it for me — maybe just a hot dog and a few coins, but still. Sometimes, when there weren’t enough kids available to help clear the ice, I managed to do both jobs. I’d skate out as the ram for the pregame show and between periods, then change, help clean the ice, and after the game I’d put the costume back on for the postgame celebration, high-fiving the kids and posing for pictures with them.

I look back on those days with so much affection. Even though, in the background, the differences between me and my teammates were already becoming more and more obvious.

The boys who played hockey and the girl who played hockey.

The only girl.

My parents wanted me to be sporty, to teach me all kinds of activities and keep me moving. At first, skating lessons were supposed to be just another skill I’d pick up. But what really caught my attention was that after our session, a group of boys would head onto the ice carrying these interesting-looking sticks. They were wobbling around on their skates just like I was, but they also got to chase this little black thing around the ice.

I wanted to try that so badly!

Why not? Let the little girl take a few swings at the puck… Nobody expected that moment to set the course of my entire life. Nobody thought I could fall in love with hockey so completely and so permanently. Why would they? Girls didn’t play hockey. Not in Czech republic back then. But out of all the sports I’d tried, this was the one that really stole my heart. And I’d tried plenty. I swam, I was pretty close to tennis, and for a long time I also played soccer, following in my dad’s footsteps. And I think I was actually pretty good at it.

But even those memories couldn’t compete with the ones I made on the ice.

My first hockey stick was lent to me by Richard Hrazdíra, a longtime youth coach in Zlín who also worked with the senior team’s goalies. It was an orange Easton with a black blade. I can still picture it perfectly. When Hrazda saw how much fun I was having with it, he generously told me I could keep it.

All he asked my mom was what kind of protective gear I had on underneath my red snowsuit.

“What do you mean, protective gear?” Mom looked at him, confused.

So he explained that if she was going to let me go out there and battle it out with the boys, a ski helmet wasn’t going to cut it. I needed at least some elbow and knee pads.

My mom wasn’t too keen on the idea of her little girl playing such a rough sport. If I was going to skate, she figured I might as well wear a little dress while doing it. So she took me to watch a figure-skating practice. I remember it perfectly. We were sitting behind the benches, and I was absolutely bored out of my mind watching what was happening on the ice. Mom kept trying to point out how cool all the spins and jumps were, but after a while I finally asked her when the skaters were going to get their hockey sticks and start playing.

“But there aren’t any hockey sticks here,” she explained.

That was the moment I lost the last bit of interest.

I was simply crazy about hockey and everything that came with it. Ever since I was little, I’d been playing street hockey with a ball around our apartment complex, hanging out with older boys and going outside to play with them. I didn’t even have any girlfriends. And I used to boycott the skirts Mom wanted me to wear.

Seriously, who wears a skirt to the rink?

I didn’t need to prove I was different from everyone else. I wanted to be a hockey player, just like everyone else on the team. It came naturally to me from the very beginning. I never wore braids or ponytails. My long, curly hair would stick out from underneath my helmet, but if you didn’t know me, you probably wouldn’t have guessed I was a girl at first glance. I looked more like a little Jagr. Just a long-haired kid.

I rarely ran into other girls on the ice. Every now and then, one would pop up on a team from a smaller club nearby. The only time we really got together was at events organized by Girls’ Hockey. Around fourth grade, we signed up for a big tournament in Brno. Dozens of teams showed up. Naturally, they were all boys’ teams — and then there was us. Zlín was competing too, so I went to our coach and asked if he’d mind me playing with the girls for a change. He had no problem with it. If anything, I was freeing up another spot for someone who otherwise might not have made the trip.

Both our team and the Zlín boys started in different groups and did well. We both kept advancing until the playoff bracket matched us up against each other in the semifinals.

The boys, my friends, the guys I’d grown up sharing a locker room with, were good players. They already knew how to pick the corners and they could really skate. But we had an awesome goalie who was having an absolute night. She stopped everything. Not a single puck got past her. Meanwhile, I got a rebound during the game. I was trying to hit it completely differently, but somehow I managed to put it in the net.

We won 1–0.

I’m not usually much of a goal celebrator. I’m not great at showing that instant rush of excitement. I definitely wasn’t back then. But that goal filled me with so much adrenaline that I completely lost it. I have no idea what came over me, but I took off across the entire rink toward where my parents were sitting and…

I bowed to them.

I honestly have no idea what got into me.

But I remember the feeling of satisfaction that stayed with me after that goal. All those little comments and supposedly harmless remarks about how I was a girl and would never make it in hockey — things I’d already been hearing from people around me — felt like they’d finally been silenced, at least for a little while.

I can do this! I can play hockey!

Honestly, I don’t even remember how the final turned out. The semifinal was such a huge moment for me that it completely overshadowed everything else. Beating my own teammates was the best feeling ever.

Yeah. But then the weekend was over, and I had to go back to them.

I vividly remember walking into the locker room that day. You know that moment when everyone’s talking, but suddenly the whole room goes quiet and there are a few seconds of awkward silence? It was as if that was the first time I fully realized that, yes, I was part of this team. One of them.

But at the same time, I was still somehow on my own.

“So, have you gotten your period yet?”

That was a classic line back then. Normally, my teammates wouldn’t have dared say something like that to a girl, but they didn’t hold back around me. I was their buddy. One of the guys.

Those kinds of comments started becoming more frequent. Suddenly, the boys could be nasty. They’d deliberately give me a hard time. We weren’t the same group of buddies anymore, one team always having a laugh together like we’d been since we were little. Suddenly, they were on one side and I was on the other. The one who was different.

I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush, but that’s the power of a group: one or two people start making fun of someone, and others gradually join in. Sometimes simply because they feel they can get away with it too. There were still plenty of decent guys who wouldn’t have done anything like that themselves, but they couldn’t exactly be seen hanging out with me or standing up for me. It would have damaged their standing in the team. They’d have taken heat for it too. On top of that, younger players gradually started joining our original group. They seemed to react to me the most. To them, I was an anomaly — something they’d never seen in hockey before.

One day, we were waiting around for something at school. It must have been seventh grade. I was surrounded by a bunch of guys from hockey. One of the younger boys, a year below me, kept getting in my face. “You could never beat me in a fight,” was one of his usual lines. Normally, that kind of talk didn’t bother me. I just ignored it. But then…

“A girl will never be better at hockey!”

Blah, blah, blah. Let them say whatever they wanted. At that point, I was already better than plenty of them. By a long way. And they all knew it.

“And you’re not even strong enough…”

I’m not a hothead. I actually consider myself a pretty patient person. But this time, I’d had enough. I can’t remember exactly what set me off. It was probably something that seemed harmless on its own. I was just tired of one group constantly telling me I’d never beat a boy in a fight, while another kept insisting that boys were better hockey players than girls. And this younger kid was really getting under my skin, hanging around me and pushing my buttons.

“Will you shut up already, or I’m seriously gonna smack you,” I told him. “What do you want from me? You wanna fight? I’ve got no problem with that.”

He said I’d get in trouble because we were at school.

“You’re the one who’s gonna get in trouble, not me,” I replied.

Meanwhile, one group started egging me on, saying I wouldn’t actually do it. The other was shouting, “Come on, get him!”

He wouldn’t leave me alone, and I finally snapped. As he kept jumping around me, we got into it. I shoved him away, which he didn’t like. When he came at me, I punched him. My sister went to a police academy high school, so thanks to her I had some idea of how to handle myself.

He fell down and started crying. He was bleeding, and I’d chipped part of his tooth. It must have been quite a punch, because my hand hurt too.

And once again, there were two camps around us. One cheered, saying it was awesome. The other was furious, saying I couldn’t do something like that.

What mattered to me was that I’d finally shut the instigator up. It was pretty clear he wasn’t going to try anything with me again. I even heard that when he complained to his dad afterward, his dad told him, “Well, you probably had it coming.”

I would have preferred to handle the situation differently. I’m not proud that I reacted that way. On the other hand, maybe I really did have to show him where the line was. The fact is, from that moment on, I earned a certain amount of respect. By the next day, everyone at school and at the rink knew what I’d done. Some of the older guys even admired me for it. I started hanging out with them more after that.

But it wasn’t a good period. There were times when my teammates and I would still have a great laugh together, and I felt like part of the group. Then someone would suddenly flip a switch, and everything would go to hell again. It was constantly up and down. Those swings eventually peaked during my first year in the U18 program. We were doing a drill, and I was standing in a group waiting for my turn when one of the guys started firing pucks at me.

I know exactly who it was. And I know he was doing it on purpose. I’d start moving, the coach would happen to be looking the other way, and another puck would come flying at me.

I don’t know why. I’d never been competition for this guy. He was in an older age group, and he was a defenseman, while I played forward.

Back then, I just swallowed it and kept going.

If I found out today that someone on a team was treating a teammate like that, I’d be devastated. But back then, I simply pretended nothing was happening. It wasn’t exactly comfortable showing up at the rink knowing that someone was quietly, subtly, but still painfully making it clear they had a problem with me.

But… I loved hockey so much, and I valued being part of an Extraliga youth team so much, that I simply pushed it out of my mind.

Everyone else could see what was going on. They must have. Still, I never noticed anyone standing up for me. But I can’t really hold it against those guys. They weren’t all bad — not by a long shot. It was mainly the ones who hadn’t grown up with me from the beginning who generally treated me differently. Who knows what their parents might have been telling them at home, too. And at the end of the day, nobody was really hurting me. Sure, I was sad. I could feel that things weren’t quite right. It was one of the tougher periods. I no longer felt comfortable in the group that had been my second family since I was little.

I wouldn’t call it classic bullying. Certainly not the physical kind. Nobody would ever have dared lay a hand on me or hurt me. It’s not like the boys were trying to get under my clothes or anything like that. Not at all. That was also one reason my parents didn’t make an issue of it. I think they knew what I was like. They knew I wouldn’t let anyone cross a serious line.

But emotionally, my teammates could really make things difficult for me.

There wasn’t any hatred behind it. Even when someone teased me or tried to get a rise out of me, deep down I knew the guys liked me, even if they didn’t want to admit it. I just felt like an easy target. The only girl among a bunch of boys. What could make me stand out more?

As we got older, that divide also brought a few other complications.

At the rink, we’d always had clear rules. I showered separately, and the coaches made sure the boys waited until I was out. Not once did I end up in the shower at the same time as anyone else. I’d go to the bathroom to change into my base layer, then head outside to warm up and run the stairs. Same thing after practice. I’d get out of there as quickly as possible and go do my own thing. And whenever there were moments when it was impossible to avoid being around other people changing, I simply looked the other way.

Of course, there were also boys who didn’t mind being undressed in front of me. Some even showed off what they had growing between their legs.

Still, I didn’t think of it as anything unusual. I was part of the group. One of them. Like a sister with a whole bunch of brothers. There was nothing to make a big deal about. No taboos.

Until something important began to change in all of us.

Just as I gradually started becoming interested in boys, they started becoming interested in girls. And suddenly, some of them saw me as more than just a teammate. I brushed off some of the attention, but there were secret crushes too. With two of my teammates, we had that kind of childhood relationship where you tell someone you’re going out, but nothing really changes. But then there was a guy who played two years above me, and for our age at the time, that relationship was actually serious. Little kisses behind the arena, notes tucked into our skates in the locker room.

My biggest crush.

I also had a teammate who was once my best friend, but when he fell head over heels for me and I didn’t feel the same way, he started making my life miserable. And then there was the opposite situation: I had a crush on a guy who, at the same time, kept putting me down in front of everyone. Sometimes that hurt my girly feelings.

But there was one love that never let me down.

Hockey.

It kept me going. It kept me on track and stopped me from losing my nerve.

In the end, despite all the unpleasant moments and all the feelings — returned and unreturned — I simply focused on myself. Being able to play hockey was worth it. And despite everything that wasn’t great, I still have plenty of friends among those teammates from back then, and I’m still in touch with them.