Lancaster, NY – St. Mary’s High School in Lancaster, NY, through their athletic department, will be adding a girls hockey team to their interscholastic sports offerings.
St. Mary’s High School is thrilled to welcome a girls team to the St. Mary’s hockey family. St. Mary’s currently has three boys teams participating at the WNY Federation and Club levels. The boys program has been to the state finals two of the last three years and is led by Director of Hockey, Mark Dantonio. Dantonio will be instrumental in the development of this girls hockey program.
Local girls hockey participation numbers continue to grow, and there are several current female students at St. Mary’s who also play hockey for outside club and travel teams. These factors formed the perfect landscape for St. Mary’s to build their own women’s team, which will be immediately competitive within WNY girls hockey. St. Mary’s will participate in the WNY Girls Varsity Ice Hockey Federation.
“As a premier co-ed private school, it is important for us to be a leader when it comes to gender equality in all facets of our school community,” said Kevin Kelleher, St. Mary’s Head of School. “When there is a legitimate interest from our girls in a sport that isn’t currently offered and the numbers are there, we have a responsibility to provide these types of opportunities for our students. The right decision, here, is to form our own girls hockey program. As with all of our students and student athletes at St. Mary’s, there will be a tremendous amount of responsibility on these pioneering young ladies, as they will be expected to be leaders in the classroom, in the community, and in this case, at the rinks around WNY,” Kelleher concluded.
