THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 10, 1995 TAG: 9501100438
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
No one disrobes quite like Danae Aplas.
She squirms. She wiggles. She stretches. She tugs. She has mastered the art of changing her clothes without flashing an inch of flesh.
This is a critical talent when you're the only woman in the Virginia Open Ice Hockey League. The men use the locker room. Aplas undresses in the ice-rink lobby.
``Well, maybe I could go in the locker room,'' says the 26-year-old wing, laughing. ``But the guys get completely naked in there, so I just change out here.''
As her team, the aptly named Late Comers, arrive for their weekly late-night game (ice time for the league begins at 10:30 p.m.), Aplas drags her gear into Iceland's lobby, where she plops down on a bench and begins the tedious job of suiting up: shoulder pads, elbow pads, shinguards, garters, padded shorts, skates, helmet, face mask and gloves.
``Very feminine, right?'' Aplas jokes as she wobbles toward the ice on her skate guards.
Aplas is part of a new wave of female ice hockey players. There are more than a dozen girls playing in the local youth league and several women playing in the twice-weekly pickup games. Women are even gliding into the professional ranks: Two female goalies played in the East Coast Hockey League last season.
On the ice, Aplas - No. 4 - resembles her teammates, except she is a head shorter than the other Late Comers and the only one with a spray of brown hair streaming out of her helmet.
She is also the only player the ref calls ``Doc.''
Danae Aplas is a doctor and a Navy lieutenant. She's an intern at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital during the day, a stick-slamming hockey player by night.
Someday she hopes to be an anesthesiologist. These days, it is opposing players she knocks out.
Although this is a ``no-check'' league, it is not no-contact. Players rough each other up a bit. Fights occasionally break out, and Aplas gives as well as she gets.
``It's ice hockey, for heaven's sakes,'' Aplas says with a grin. ``I expect to get checked.''
Ed Dearborn, acting president of the league, says Aplas has earned the respect of the other players in this otherwise all-male league that takes its hockey very seriously.
``I know the first time our team played hers, we kind of knocked her around a little bit,'' Dearborn confesses. ``She just got right up and stayed in there. The guys on my team have the utmost respect for her. Besides, her hockey skills are very, very good.''
Aplas began her hockey career at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. When her mother spied Wesleyan's ice rink and learned that the school had a women's ice hockey team, she had just one request: ``Please, Danae, don't play ice hockey.''
It was some time before she told her mom that she had made the varsity team.
She was already a good skater. She had learned when she was 10 and practicing on pristine white figure skates - the kind that look best with pompons and jingle bells. She liked skating so much she joined a local figure-skating club.
When the rink closed a few years later, Aplas put her skating ambitions on ice.
The next time she laced on ice skates, she was a college student trying black hockey boots.
``It was very different,'' Aplas remembers of her first time on hockey skates.
But she learned to skate hockey style, stickhandle and score goals as she played against colleges and universities in the Northeast including Yale, Boston College, Middlebury and Williams.
After college, Aplas attended medical school at the University of Southern California. While there she played co-ed hockey at Icoplex - a rink used for practice by the Los Angeles Kings.
``I once skated with Luc Robitaille,'' she boasts.
She attended a hockey clinic given by Robitaille, then a left wing with the Kings. During a scrimmage she wound up playing alongside him.
``I passed the puck to him and he scored, so I guess I got a Robitaille assist,'' Aplas says.
Aplas is dedicated to the Open Ice league. The Chesapeake resident tries to schedule her hospital rotations around late-night games.
There have been nights when she arrived on the ice after working a 12-hour shift in the hospital. And there have been occasions when she had to go on duty at 6 a.m. after skating her heart out past midnight.
``I love hockey,'' she explains. ``I can't stand to miss a game. And I just try to make up the sleep the next day.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
JIM WALKER/Staff
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/Staff
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/Staff
``I love hockey. I can't stand to miss a game,'' says Danae Aplas,
left.
by CNB