by PAUL CATALA

All three girls are Floridians. Natives, born in the Tampa Bay area, where Florida’s seasonal weather offers maybe three days of "Winter."

But that didn’t stop Aspen Bahr and sisters Peyton and Kierslyn Ryman from excelling on ice. They play ice hockey, and not just against the girls, but competitively against the guys. Although for most native Floridians 40 and over, hockey is a "foreign" sport reserved for those “up north,” with the coming of the Tampa Bay Lightning professional hockey team in 1992 and the advent of indoor ice skating centers, hockey has become a popular Florida sport for the Millennial generation and above.

ASPEN BAHR Bahr, 14, is currently a ninth grader at Academy at the Farm, a charter school in Dade City. Born in Zephyrhills, where she lives, she says it was her father, David Bahr, who got her into hockey.

At 5, he moved to Utah and played hockey through high school in Orem, Utah. "For a few months, I was a figure skater, and that wasn’t for me, so then he had me try hockey," she says.

At 9 years old, Bahr began playing all-girls' Tampa Bay Jr. Lightning Hockey at the AdventHealth Center Ice rink in Wesley Chapel, where she was the assistant coach for the team for two seasons. Jr. Lightning Hockey is an elite youth hockey development program operated by the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Bahr then began playing with the Wiregrass Ranch Hockey Club Junior Varsity team, made up of boys and girls, playing all positions from center to wing to defense. "They move me around a lot. It depends on what the team needs, because sometimes we have people who are not there that day and I have to fill in for them," she says.

On the team, there are three other girls, but the rest are guys. Bahr says she senses they treat the girls "a little bit differently, but it’s not that different." "They’re always aggressive because the whole point is to win, so they don’t care who it is," she says.

As for playing with or against just females or mixing it up, Bahr says it doesn’t matter who she’s with.

With females on a travel team, she calls the sportsmanship and competition more on a "friendship level." "I like both because with the guys, it’s a higher pace normally and you’re working with different people and you get to work on more skills," she says.

As for her future on the ice, Bahr says she’s looking to get a college hockey scholarship.

Among the colleges she’s considering are the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Boston University, and Boston College – big hockey colleges where she can study marketing and business.

Additionally, a career in the Professional Women’s Hockey League would be nice, says Bahr, who is a 4.0 student in the National Honor Society and is in Future Farmers of America.

Where she shows a pig each year.

In the meantime, Bahr is looking forward to hockey tournaments in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in mid-November for a national tournament.

“It’s just a way to have fun, but you’re working with people, and you get to meet new people. It’s interesting and different from other sports, and I feel like it’s definitely more of a challenge than other sports,” she says.

And how does Bahr feel about playing the guys? “It’s great; it’s definitely fun.”

As for the other girls on the ice, Peyton and Kierslyn say they’re skating along with the guys just fine. PAYTON RYMAN

Peyton, 15, a sophomore at Wiregrass High School, started hockey at 7. She also plays Jr. Lightning Hockey with the girls' travel hockey and at Wiregrass High School co-ed, where she plays defense against mostly boys. “I honestly don’t think they treat me differently. I have more of a relationship with the girls on girls’ hockey, but (boys) don’t treat me any differently. I feel the same whether I’m playing against the girls or the guys,” she says.

Like Bahr, Peyton hopes to play hockey at a Division I college, where she wants to pursue a law degree, and possibly play professionally.

Currently, hockey against girls or guys is Peyton’s main extracurricular activity. Against the guys, she says, “I like the hitting. You can’t really do that with the girls. I know how to hit pretty good because I’ve played against boys most of my life, so I just like to hit people. It makes it more intense and fun.”

Peyton’s next tournament will be with the Lightning in mid-November in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

KIERSLYN RYMAN Kierslyn, now 18, was born and raised in Tampa and is now in Rockland, Massachusetts, living at the Lovell Academy, a private, co-ed boarding school for student-athletes, many of them hockey players.

There, she’s taking online classes for Quincy College, Quincy, Massachusetts. Kierslyn started playing hockey when she was 10, at the same time her sister started. She played at Wiregrass from 9th to 11th grade, and she’s currently playing on Lovell’s all-girls team.

“I started playing club hockey, and my coach saw I was good at skating backwards, so he took advantage of it and put me on defense,” she says.

As for playing against the boys, Kierslyn says she did that until her junior year of high school. She says playing against boys felt a bit more “unsafe” because they grow more quickly.

“I went from Under-14 to Under-16, and in one year, everyone was two feet taller than I was,” she says.

Kierslyn did appreciate one aspect about going against the guys. She says the boys can run into each other, but with the girls,

there’s none of that. “With girls, there’s more pinning against boards; it’s physical in its own kind of way. It’s fun playing against guys because of hitting,” she says.

But overall, Kierslyn concludes, “Girls’ hockey is much better; you kind of form your own sisterhood, and you all relate to the same things.”

As for her future goals, Kierslyn is looking to get recruited by a Division III college team with a scholarship. Those include Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, or Nazareth University, Nazareth College, New York.

After the ice, she says she wants to become a criminal psychologist.

“I like reading, hanging out with friends, but I devote a lot of time to hockey. It’s really my main hobby.”