2024 was Ellie Kuespert’s year of trying new things.
She started white water kayaking and lifting weights. And then, she started playing hockey.
Kuespert, an IU junior studying elementary and special education, had never played in a real hockey game before she started playing with IU women’s club hockey at the end of the season in February 2024.
Before joining the club, Kuespert grew up rollerblading, watching hockey and attending public skates at the Fort Wayne ice rink. In her hometown of Fremont, Indiana, there were no recreational programs for anyone outside of college hockey, especially for girls. There wasn’t a nearby rink until 2018, when Trine University decided to install one in Angola.
In 2024, as the Professional Women’s Hockey League announced its inaugural season, the games began to stream across various social media platforms. Kuespert was inspired to see women's hockey receive such recognition and thought it was something she could see herself doing. She went to a practice in February 2024 to meet the players before her first official practice in October as a member of the team.
“I came to the last practice of the season with no gear,” she said, explaining the spontaneous decision.
After meeting the team for the first time in February, she practiced street hockey, running around on concrete all summer. She worked on stickhandling and shooting drills, passing, face-offs, defensive and offensive skills. She did all of it with her boyfriend Cam Davies, who currently plays on the Fort Wayne River Kings. She rented all her equipment from Frank Southern Ice Arena in Bloomington, and her teammates let her borrow their sticks to play and run drills.
“I would practice over breaks and pretty much any time that I was home,” she said.
The IU women’s club hockey team is open to all skill levels. The team became an official organization in 2020 as interest grew.
Ellie Kuespert prepares for practice in the locker room March 2, 2025, at the Frank Southern Ice Arena in Bloomington. The IU Women's Club Hockey team became an official organization in 2020.
The official club roster consists of around 25 members, and the weekly practices are laid back. The team is supportive of new members, welcoming them during practice through bonding activities and games, Kuespert said. The mission of the team is focused on community and collaboration leading to individual growth.
“Leadership is not really about telling people what to do, it's making sure that your teammates feel heard and you're able to help them in any way possible,” IU women’s hockey president McKenna Cook said.
The team’s coach, Dillon Frechen, 33, also makes sure things run at a speed comfortable for everyone. Having previously coached for Bloomington Blades Youth Hockey Association, he came from a background of co-ed programs that consisted predominantly of boys.
It was his first year leading an all-girls team in the four years of his coaching career. During three years coaching the co-ed youth program, there was only one girl, PJ Nation, on the team. He was able to observe her interact in the male-dominated environment,and worked to balance coaching technical skills with creating a safe space for all.
“I've had to work a lot with her and her family to make her feel safe and like she's a member of the team and find ways to make the other men on the team, you know, respect her and appreciate what she brings,” Frechen said.
Coming to coach the women’s club hockey team at IU was an entirely different playing field.
“It felt like an opportunity to be a part of a positive, safe learning environment, which is where I think I thrive in as an educator,” Frechen said. “And that has exceeded my expectations.”
Women’s hockey culture is typically regarded as more inclusive than men’s hockey, which deals with issues such as toxic masculinity and aggression, Frechen said. Women teams are often more accepting of diversity in terms of sexuality and race both in terms of their players and their fans.
Kuespert said that the team has hosted and participated in Pride nights, Black History Month celebrations and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month to promote inclusivity.
Kuespert also said one of the team’s overarching goals is addressing the inequities between men’s and women’s hockey to bridge the gap. The investment in women’s hockey isn’t just monetary; what the team is asking for is visibility on ice and equal resources. IU women’s club hockey’s Sunday night games often stand in the way of attendance, Frechen said, as people are not as willing to go out of their way to come to a game or practice every Sunday night at 8 p.m. when they would rather relax and be with their family.
“I think a lot of it really is just getting known,” Cook said. “If you go to the boys’ games, it's usually super packed and they have a lot more outreach.”
Exposure in the media is an important part of spotlighting women’s hockey, just as it was for Kuespert to see women taken seriously in the sport. After she joined the hockey team, Kuespert took the initiative of managing the women’s hockey Instagram account. By creating vibrant posts and highlighting the team’s achievements, she has improved the team’s presence online, including marketing for its games. The team’s most popular post features the girls on ice celebrating Every Body Week, which gained over 3,000 views.
“I never expected to do something like this,” Kuespert said, “and so just joining was a huge leap of trusting myself that I can.”
Ellie Kuespert runs drills with her team March 2, 2025, at the Frank Southern Ice Arena in Bloomington. Kuespert had never played in a real hockey game before she went to an IU women’s club hockey practice in October 2024.
The team’s current goal is to grow. The hockey community at IU started a petition on Feb. 13 to lobby for an on-campus rink. While the team appreciates the space that Frank Southern provides, it needs 500 seats at the rink to create a Division I hockey team, according to the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Cook said the team is also expanding its own local outreach efforts, collaborating with Greek organizations on campus, as well as local businesses.
Cook said the team partnered with Zeta Tau Alpha for a "pink the rink" fundraiser last year, which is a philanthropic initiative to fight breast cancer with proceeds going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The Zeta freshmen each sold two tickets to the hockey game and cheered as the team played against Illinois State University's club team. The team is also actively trying to work with Girls Inc., an organization that fosters girls’ growth and leadership through education and outreach, to teach younger girls about hockey and options to play.
On Feb. 21, IU defeated Illinois State 3-1. The following day, it won a second game against the Redbirds. The score was 4-0, which marked the first program sweep and its first shutout victory.
Kuespert said joining the hockey team has taught her not to limit herself to a certain identity, and that’s the message the women’s hockey team is trying to spread to all girls wanting to try the sport.
“I feel like women are just put in boxes so often; you're seen as one thing or another,” she said. “For so much of my life, I was a band kid, I was a theater kid, I was a choir kid, and I still definitely am, but I've just been advocating more for women being able to do everything that they want.”
