Breaking New Ice : Simi Valley’s Andrea Frye Upsets Hockey Stereotypes

Wayne Frye sits on his living room sofa in Simi Valley, talking hockey, brimming with the childish excitement that Typical Hockey Dads always have when they talk hockey.

He talks about growing up in Asheboro, N.C., playing endless hours of street hockey with makeshift sticks fashioned out of tree branches and pucks created from electrical tape and balled-up twine.

He recalls his tenure as a hockey coach at Cal Lutheran. And about his new hockey equipment manufacturing company.

He mentions the greatest hockey players he has seen--Stan Mikita, Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky.

But most of all, he talks about his hockey-playing kid. Surrounded by massive trophies, beaming with paternal pride, he spews Typical Hockey Dad stories like a broken main gushes water.

He tells of the time his kid--at age 9--insisted on playing in a tournament championship game despite a 104-degree fever.

And the time his kid--at age 11--passed up a wide-open breakaway, sacrificing a sure hat trick to help a teammate score.

And the time this March when his kid, hobbled by a knee injury, ignored a doctor’s prescription of three weeks’ rest to score two shorthanded goals in the last 90 seconds of a crucial game against an archrival, turning a 3-2 deficit into a stunning 4-3 victory.

“I can tell these stories all day,” Frye says.

He is not kidding. He is, after all, a Typical Hockey Dad.

Except for one thing. Frye is talking about his daughter.

Girls aren’t supposed to play ice hockey. It’s too rough. Too dangerous. The sport conjures up images of toothless goons with black eyes and jagged scars. Images of Joe Palookas on ice, bashing each other’s skulls with sticks. Hockey does not make one think of a sun-bronzed blonde with perfect teeth, lolling around her living room in white shorts and a pink halter top.

Think again.

Andrea Frye, 17, has outskated, outscored and generally outclassed boys since she began playing hockey 12 years ago. This year, she led her Thousand Oaks-based Midget squad to the Southern California championship, leading the league in goals, placing second in points, and earning recognition as most valuable player on the team.

But Frye doesn’t spend much time dwelling on the gender politics of her accomplishments.

Why ice hockey?

Why not ice hockey?

She tried field hockey for a week. She was terrible. She has tried basketball, tennis, volleyball, softball and soccer too. She prefers hockey.

Frye’s only experience competing with members of her own sex came last summer when she was one of 68 girls invited to the USA Ice Hockey Federation’s Olympic development camp in St. Cloud, Minn. At the camp, Frye, a left wing, was ranked among the top five schoolgirl players in the nation. She has been invited to return to the under-18 camp this month, and plans to try out for the Olympic team next year if women’s hockey is approved for the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

She would love to play in the Olympics. And she is looking forward to playing women’s hockey in college. The Simi Valley High junior already has received letters from Princeton, Cornell and Dartmouth, among other schools. Still, the 5-foot-9, 135-pound Frye has never thought of herself as a female hockey player, and neither have her teammates. Just a hockey player.

“She’s just one of the guys,” linemate Adam Richter says. “We treat her just like anybody else.”

Even though not too many of the other guys shower and apply makeup before games. As Frye says, you never know who you’re going to meet out there.

Frye began pestering her parents to let her play hockey when she was 5. At the time, her mother was apoplectic. Even her Typical Hockey Dad was skeptical. The parental verdict was clear: no hockey. No way. Out of the question. Case closed.

Barbara Frye tried buying her daughter Barbie dolls, hoping they would help Frye forget about hockey.

It didn’t work.

“She played with those dolls for maybe 20 minutes before she got bored,” said Barbara, a second-grade teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. “I guess we realized then that she wasn’t going to be a typical girl.”

Frye continued to clamor loudly--and incessantly--for a chance to play. Eventually, the kindergartner wore down her parents’ resistance.

“Rather than listen to her whine and beg and complain, we decided to let her get hockey out of her system,” Wayne recalls with a grin. “She never did.”

The Fryes assumed that their daughter would quit hockey before her male counterparts’ growth spurts, before she was old enough for full-contact leagues. But as the Fryes were job-hopping around the country--from New Jersey to South Carolina to Louisiana to Utah to Tennessee to Montana to Idaho before arriving in Simi Valley in 1987--their daughter was getting increasingly attached to the sport. She was also getting increasingly good at it, breaking scoring records at almost every stop on her family’s cluttered itinerary.

She has endured more than her share of abuse playing against guys. The post-whistle cheap shots, the elbows to the face, the butt-ends. The mindless, bloodthirsty shouts of “Kill the girl!” and worse--from players, fans, even coaches. But she has learned to take them in stride.

And, occasionally, to fight back. When Frye was 14, she drew a 30-day suspension for bashing an opposing hack artist over the head with her stick. In Pasadena this year, she shoved an opponent to the ice and pounded him until linesmen pulled her off to the penalty box.

Not very ladylike, perhaps, but hey, the guy was trying to push her around.

“We don’t worry about her getting hurt anymore,” her father says. “You can get hurt walking out the door to your car. Life’s a gamble. You might as well do what you enjoy.”

You might as well. After all, Frye has never been seriously injured on the ice. Oh, she did break her wrist once when she was 8. But that was during a brief foray into the brutal, barbarous world of . . . figure skating.

It is 3 p.m. on Sunday, and the Thousand Oaks team has arrived at the Conejo Ice Skating Center in Newbury Park for its 3:30 exhibition against an all-star team from Ottawa. Everyone except Andrea Frye. Her father is here, but the team MVP is nowhere to be seen.

“Typical Andrea,” Wayne says, chuckling and rolling his eyes. “She’ll probably roll in here around 3:25.”

Close. At 3:18, Frye strolls into the home locker room, giggling something about running out of gas. The pregame locker room commotion continues uninterrupted: the joking, the yelling, the strapping on of shoulder pads, buckling of chin straps, the adjusting of jocks for the 11th and 12th times. Frye plops her equipment bag down on the floor and calls her father over. She wants to borrow some money to go to the movies that night.

“Typical Andrea,” Wayne mutters. “Five minutes to game time, and she’s trying to negotiate a loan.”

Tom Sherak, an energetic executive vice president at 20th Century Fox who somehow finds the time to coach the Thousand Oaks team, quiets everyone to announce that he and his Ottawan counterpart have decided to mix up the teams. The players groan. “Bogus,” someone grumbles.

So Frye begins the game on the Ottawa squad. With her pads on, she doesn’t look much different from anyone else on her team. The only gender giveaway is her hair, flowing out of her blue helmet in a long, bright ponytail.

She is the best skater on the ice, with an explosive first step and a smooth, confident stride. It also is apparent that she is not entirely motivated. Although incredibly fluid and clearly a gifted playmaker, she doesn’t dig in the corners, get back on defense, or do anything else that would expend much energy.

But who could blame her? It is a meaningless exhibition game. She is playing against her own teammates. And it is July. Hockey season ended two months ago.

“Come on, Andrea!” shouts Wayne, who is working the door for Thousand Oaks line shifts.

“If this game counted for anything, she’d be playing a lot harder,” he grumbles.

Wayne, that Typical Hockey Dad, isn’t shy about pushing his kid to work harder. But often, it’s a losing battle. She is laid-back. She would like to play in the Olympics, but it is far from an obsession.

“It’s just a thought,” she says. She hadn’t even planned to play for Thousand Oaks this season, until Sherak promised to introduce her to Luke Perry of “Beverly Hills 90210” if she suited up.

“Andrea is an extremely talented, tremendously giving kid who likes to go out there and have fun,” says Sherak, who admits he has yet to come through on his half of the Perry bargain. “Wayne watches her very closely. Maybe even a bit too closely.”

A typical Frye family exchange:

Wayne: You know, Andrea doesn’t even work out during the off-season.

Andrea: I know, I know. I’m going to start this year. I was supposed to start this morning. Wayne: And?

Andrea: (Giggling sheepishly) I overslept.

Wayne does not respond. He just grimaces and shakes his head. But you know what he’s thinking: Typical Andrea.

“Yeah, Dad pushes me,” Frye says. “Sometimes, he pushes a little too hard. We get in a lot of arguments about it.”

But Typical Hockey Dad loves his daughter. That’s why he planned all those family vacations around hockey clinics. That’s why he woke up to drive his daughter to all those 4 a.m. practices. That’s why he nearly explodes with pride when he talks about the time she scored seven goals in a game back in Knoxville, Tenn.

“Watching Andrea play hockey is the biggest joy in my life,” Wayne says. “It’s the highlight of my weekends. I’m really going to miss that when she goes off to college. I can’t wait until the day when she has a little girl, so I can watch her play.”

It’s midway through the third period, and Frye--playing for Thousand Oaks this period--is ambling leisurely after a loose puck. An Ottawa defenseman gets there first, but he shows no interest in the puck. He grabs Frye’s jersey with one hand, her face mask with the other, and wrestles her to the ground. No penalty is called. Frye shoots the guy a “What gives?” look, then skates off angrily toward the bench, where Wayne is holding the door open for her.

“Hey Andrea,” Wayne yells. She glares at him.

“Did he ask you for a date?”

Frye breaks into a wide grin and shakes her head. You know what she is thinking: Typical Hockey Dad.