Ice time has arrived for high school girls' varsity teams practice for first time monday.
They are the Blades, the St. Paul public schools' newly formed girls hockey team, and they and scores of other Twin Cities high school girls are coming to a hockey arena near you. Monday is the start of official practice for the first season of varsity high school girls hockey in Minnesota, and some team members were already skating together informally this week. They were marking another milestone in a years-long move toward equity in boys and girls athletics. This is the first team effort to sort of go into that direction,'' said Ron Slotsve, St. Paul schools' supervisor of athletics and aquatics. Some schools have had teams in the past, but in March the Minnesota State High School League sanctioned girls hockey as a varsity sport.