If it weren’t for the pink laces knotted tightly on Dominique Biron’s skates or the mass of brown curls that bounce beneath her helmet and rest freely on the back of her jersey, it would be hard to differentiate her from the 24 other players on the Bow High School hockey team’s roster.
“We don’t think of her as ‘the girl.’ We don’t think of her as ‘Dom, the girl.’ We think of her as ‘Dom, the player,’ ” Bow Coach Tim Walsh said after a recent win over Oyster River. “We put out the lines and she’s just No. 17.”
Biron is, of course, a bit different than her teammates. And she knows that.
“I think being a girl, I feel like sometimes I have a little bit of a disadvantage,” the junior forward for the 10-1 Falcons said.
But if you think Biron has ever let that slight disadvantage hold her back, you’d be wrong.
In fact, according to Walsh and Bow senior captain Doug Champagne, Biron’s “disadvantage” has only made her work harder to get stronger.
“She’s improved dramatically since her freshman year. She’s gotten a lot stronger, which was a big thing for her,” Walsh said. “She’s always been a good skater but she’s just so much stronger and that’s because she really works her tail off.”
“She knows she can compete with everyone so I think that’s helped her a lot,” Champagne said. “If you have the confidence that you can play well, you’re all set, and she has that.”
Because there’s rarely enough players who come out for all-female youth hockey teams, most girls begin by playing peewee hockey with the boys, and Biron is no different in that regard.
“I was really born into hockey,” she said. “I started skating when I was 2 and started playing when I was 5. … I’ve been playing boys’ hockey my whole life so it wasn’t really that big of a switch for me going into high school.”
In fact, only recently did Biron join an all-girls’ squad – the 16U Tier 1 Islanders Hockey Club. She plays a split-season schedule, which means her girls’ team will wrap up play a few weeks before the high school season starts. She’s the only player on the Islanders who plays boys’ hockey; the rest of her teammates play at prep schools.
“It’s a different game. It’s a lot less physical and it’s a tough transition sometimes. I think it usually takes me a game or two,” she said. “But I think I get something on the girls’ team that I don’t get on the boys’ team and there’s something I get from the boys that I don’t get from the girls.”
As for female role models, Biron didn’t have to look very far for one of those.
“I think I was just really inspired by my older sister. I mean, she loves the game. I think she’s really the reason I got into it,” she said.
Her sister, Desiree Casian, spent a year playing professionally for the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. But much like Biron, Casian got her start at Bow High – playing for the same coach her younger sister now plays for.
Although Biron started weight training to build strength after her freshman year, she, along with the rest of the Falcons, took extra interest in offseason improvement after falling in last year’s Division II title game to Windham, 4-3.
The fateful night last March at Manchester’s SNHU Arena brings back bad memories.
“It was a really tough loss. We all thought we had it until the very end. It was really just a disappointment,” she said. “I think that helped us going into this year to work that much harder. I think we just had a little more intensity this year because of that, a chip on our shoulder.”
For Biron, there is a bittersweet element to the memory. She scored the game-tying goal with six minutes left in the third period, her second varsity goal.
“Honestly, that was one of the best experiences of my life. I was super pumped. I mean, everyone went wild,” she said. “It was crazy.”
The loss hung over the heads of Bow’s returning players throughout the summer, but they burned some of those frustrations on their offseason workouts with Walsh.
“It’s meant to prepare us for the hockey season and get us in shape and strong. And to improve on whatever coach thinks we need to improve on,” Biron said. “(That loss) was the elephant in the room. I mean, no one really wanted to talk about it.”
Walsh noticed Biron’s dedication to self-improvement and he thinks it’s paid dividends.
“At the high school level, the difference is the strength of the boys, and (Dom) has gotten stronger than quite a few guys on our team,” Walsh said.
She has already doubled her scoring total from last season with five goals and an assist through 10 games.
According to assistant captain Colin Tracy, Biron has become “just one of the boys” in the way she takes on all challenges she’s faced with.
“She battles a lot of adversity being one of the only girls in the league but she really battles it well,” said Tracy, a senior and the team’s third-leading scorer with four goals and 17 assists. “She doesn’t get intimidated by any of the guys. She just works as hard as she can like she’s just another guy out there.”
Although her teammates have embraced her with no issues, Walsh said Bow’s opponents can sometimes be a little less open-minded.
“I have a lot of history playing with girls that were good, and a lot of times, guys act like real jackasses,” he said. “We played some games her freshman and sophomore year where kids would take runs at her because she’s a girl. But that doesn’t happen that much anymore. I think other teams respect her as a player. You get some teams, some programs that don’t curb it. They allow the kids to do that stuff.”
Walsh added: “That’s not how we approach it at all. She’s earned everything she gets with us. I have a lot of respect for her in that regard. She’s earned it because she knew she wasn’t going to just get anything.”
He has also seen a shift in attitude on his own team over the years – but in a different direction.
“I think what happens sometimes, and I’ve seen it in the past, some guys get very protective of the girl on the team,” Walsh said. “When guys are checking her, they’ll go and take a dumb penalty to retaliate. I told the guys, ‘She can handle herself. She’s fine. We don’t need to do that.’ We had that conversation once and we haven’t had any issues with that.”
Biron’s competitive drive has made her into a successful three-sport athlete.
“I think it’s just about how competitive I am,” she said. “No matter what sport I’m doing, I want to win. I hate to lose.”
So two years ago, Biron decided to take up field hockey, never having played before. She also runs track for the Falcons, and finished first in three events (100, 200 and high jump) and second (300 hurdles) in another at the Division III outdoor state meet last season.
She made the varsity field hockey team two years ago. Although Biron said there aren’t many similarities between field hockey and ice hockey, she’s found ways to incorporate her skills designated for the ice whenever she takes the field.
“I think playing ice hockey has changed the way I compete in field hockey compared to other girls on the team. I am usually a little more physical,” she said. “I’m a left shot in hockey, which is kind of hard because they only have righty sticks in field hockey, so I use a lot of reverse stick, which not a lot of other people do.”
Walsh said he thinks Biron’s success in other sports has helped her build confidence that translates well to ice hockey.
“She’s a great athlete,” he said. “In terms of hockey, she’s really putting it all together and it’s helped her gain more confidence. She’s contributing like anyone else on the team. She’s earned her time, just like the rest of the guys on the team.”
On a team full of boys, the lone girl sticks out because of her work ethic, competitive drive, passion for the game and pure athletic ability. Not because of the pink laces on her skates or her brown curly hair.
(Michelle Berthiaume can be reached at 369-3338, mberthiaume@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @MonitorMichelle.)