When Brittney Brooks was growing up in Las Vegas in the early 2000s, there were no girls youth hockey teams.
She skated with the boys until leaving the valley during her senior year of high school to catch the eye of college scouts. After a year in Colorado, she attended Colgate University in New York, where she played three seasons as a goalie.
Times have sure changed.
Last weekend in Anaheim, Calif., two under-12 girls hockey teams from Las Vegas duked it out for a tournament championship.
The Storm beat the Jr. Golden Knights 3-0, bringing home a trophy from a tournament that also featured teams from Southern California and Arizona.
What makes the duel even more remarkable is that the two Las Vegas teams were both in their inaugural season.
“We both went to the finals and then in the tournament, we led the tournament with Vegas kids, which is pretty unbelievable,” said Brooks, the coach of the Storm and whose family owns Las Vegas Ice Center.
Brooks’ hope is that youth hockey here continues to develop where high-level players don’t need to venture out of state to get noticed by scouts.
To that end is the Pacific Girls Hockey League, a Tier II circuit sanctioned by USA Hockey that launched this season. The Storm and the Jr. Golden Knights play in the league, which includes teams affiliated with the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and Arizona Coyotes.
Besides the under-12 team, the Storm has an under-16 team, which Brooks said she thought would help with the development and recruitment of the younger players.
“That has been an issue with girls hockey in the past, is most girls want to play with the boys because they think it’s better or a higher level,” Brooks said. “But now that we have the older girls setting an example that hey, girls play hockey against each other and it’s good hockey, I think a lot more girls want to play with the girls.”
Nyna Cruchet, the 11-year-old captain of the under-12 Storm, said she got into hockey because her father and older brother played and the family had season tickets to the Golden Knights.
She jumped at the chance to participate in local learn-to-skate programs. She had to play on boys teams at first, but then skated on a girls team with the Jr. Golden Knights before joining the Storm’s under-12 girls team.
“It’s really nice because it’s just a better connection with my teammates than when I’m playing with boys because usually I’m the only girl,” said Cruchet, who led last weekend’s tournament with seven goals.
A North Dakota native, her father, Sean Cruchet, has played in adult leagues in Las Vegas since he moved here 20 years ago. Nyna’s brother Xavier, 13, plays for the Storm’s under-14 team.
“It’s nice to have that level of competition, all-girls,” Sean Cruchet said. “A lot of times if there’s not enough girls teams, sometimes girls have to play boys teams, and if it’s like a 12U girls team they play a 10U boys team, and it’s just not the same.”
The Storm’s program is long-established, even if the girls team is newer. The Jr. Golden Knights are a younger program, forming after the NHL arrived in the valley. Owner Bill Foley’s blueprint for expanding the game in Las Vegas was to invest in youth programs, knowing the only way for Las Vegas to transform into a true hockey city was to get a younger generation involved in all aspects of the sport.
The Jr. Golden Knights have 12 teams at various levels, including two girls teams. While the girls team formed last season, this is the first full season of the under-12 squad after COVID-19 affected last year.
The Golden Knights’ arrival has had a trickle-down effect on every level of hockey in Las Vegas.
Darren Eliot is executive director of the Jr. Golden Knights and has more than a decade of experience growing hockey at the grassroots level in Las Vegas, Michigan, Anaheim and Atlanta. He knows what an NHL team can do for the local hockey scene.
In the season before the Golden Knights’ inaugural campaign, there were 92 registered under-8 players — boys and girls — in the valley, Eliot said. Last season, there were 810.
“The biggest thing the Golden Knights have done is broaden the base of hockey,” Eliot said. “The notion of having all levels of competitiveness really centers around getting as many kids in the game as possible, not a random team here or there picked by parents. That’s the difference of having an NHL team with a vision and with people that have a history of building programs.”
The growth of Las Vegas youth hockey, particularly on the girls’ side, was on full display in Anaheim last weekend.
All the leading scorers were either Storm or Jr. Golden Knights players, helping them to a first- and second-place finish.
There are also girls in various house leagues in Las Vegas, but between the Jr. Golden Knights under-10 team, the Storm’s under-16 and both programs’ under-12 teams, there is more opportunity than ever for female players in the valley.
“We’re basically growing,” Nyna Cruchet said. “We’re battling against each other to see who will win and which team is better.”