On The Ice With Boys, Severna Park’s Kuhlman More Than Holds Her Own

Ever since Severna Park High School senior Jessi Kuhlman first laced up a pair of skates at age 4, she just wanted to do what the boys were doing.

“Our parents took us for learn-how-to-skate-lessons,” said Kuhlman in January, recalling trips to the ice rink at what is now Benfield Sportscenter with her parents, Jim and Patti, older sister, Julie, and older brother, JP, the latter of whom had by then already started playing ice hockey. “Once I was able to skate, my coach said, ‘Alright, what do you want to do? Do you want to skate, or do you want to play hockey?’ And I was like, ‘I want to be like my brother. I want to play hockey.’”

That initial spark grew into a lifelong love for ice hockey, and today, after years spent playing for both local boys teams and regional girls club teams, Kuhlman, 18, is one of the best players on the predominantly male Severna Park team in the Maryland Student Hockey League and bound for Division-III Adrian University in Michigan on an ice hockey scholarship.

Kuhlman is not unique as a girl playing on her school’s Maryland Student Hockey League team comprised mostly of boys. Anne Arundel County’s female players include Annapolis/Old Mill’s Rebecca White, South River’s Maddie Pedersen, Arundel’s Aly Danick and Lauren Nelson and Kuhlman’s Severna Park teammates, sophomore twin sisters Erin Downing and Eva Downing and her own younger sister, freshman Jacy Kuhlman. In total there are 22 girls playing in the MSHL.

What sets Jessi Kuhlman apart is that she has established herself as one of the league’s best players. Through 10 games this season, Kuhlman leads the Falcons in scoring with 16 points on eight goals and eight assists.

Considering her upbringing, Kuhlman’s maturation into a hockey standout is not altogether surprising. Like many Severna Park families, hers is one of athletes: JP, 23; Julie, 21; and Jacy, 15, are all multi-sport athletes who competed or still compete in ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, gymnastics and swimming. Jim competed in basketball, track, lacrosse, swimming and cycling. Like Jessi, Patti was also standout girl playing on a boys team when she played for her high school’s water polo team while growing up in California, and she continues to swim and cycle regularly.

Still, the prospect of suiting up to play against boys at the high school level was nonetheless daunting for Jessi at first, for reasons both physical and mental.

“When I first started, I was terrified,” recalled Kuhlman, saying the fear of getting hit by hulking boys in opposing jerseys took some time to overcome. “Then I realized, I’m strong, I lift, I can hold my own, I’m good, and I just have to have the confidence in myself. I just get prepared to be hit.”

Kuhlman said her teammates eased the transition by collectively taking on the role of big brothers and enforcers. As is the code in hockey, players who dish out a heavy hit must be ready to take one back from their opponent and his/her teammates, and having a girl on the ice with them intensified her teammates’ instincts to protect.

“They were very, very protective of me, and that kind of helped me grow more confidence in myself,” said Kuhlman.

While the competition on the ice presented its challenges, Kuhlman said that being the only girl on the team as a freshman presented its challenges off the ice, too.

“Being the only girl on the boys team, the whole part off the ice was tough because all of those guys are friends, and they all hang out,” she said. “It took a little while for them to start including me in things. You kind of have to have that mentality of, I have to be able to laugh at myself, I have to have a sense of humor, I have to be able to take jokes. I tell [Jacy], just laugh. It’s all fun.”

By now, Kuhlman says for the most part she is treated the same way as everyone else during game competition, though some male opponents are initially hesitant to play as hard as they otherwise would against another boy.

Such inclinations, she says, are usually short-lived.

“A lot of the times it’s like, ‘Okay, let’s go easy on her,’ and then I snipe the goalie and they’re like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to go after her now,’” said Kuhlman with a laugh. “You watch it during games and you can kind of see that progression. But this is my fourth year now, and getting hit is just part of it, and they know me now. My teammates now are just like, ‘Yeah, you’ve got this.’”

Right before the start of this winter’s hockey season—after a long and stressful recruiting process—Kuhlman realized her dream of committing to play hockey in college, and she will suit up next year for the Adrian College Bulldogs women’s ice hockey team. She will continue to play on her current club team, the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite U19 girls team, throughout the spring and summer.

A byproduct of all the time she has devoted to the sport, says Kuhlman, is that from time to time she has gotten the chance to show younger girls that an extremely physical sport like ice hockey can be so much fun. During the recent blast of freezing weather this January, Jessi and Jacy were met by a neighborhood girl the pond behind the high school—where the high school team can frequently be found holding pickup games when the weather is cold—and passed the puck around for hours on end, until darkness fell.

“It made my day!” said Jessi of her recent afternoon on the pond with an eager youngster, whose parents were thrilled to see her out on the ice. “Whenever we’re at the rinks or at practice, we always get excited when we see a little girl on the ice. We’re like, ‘You go girl!’ I love inspiring little girls to come out and play.”