Metro Atlanta hockey moms: We’re cute and we’ll kick your butt

Yes, they wear lipstick, and they smile sweetly.

But behind those sweet smiles are some sharp teeth. And hockey moms aren’t afraid to use them.

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Pete Wenzell/Special

Adele Wenzell of Lake Oconee, is a Buffalo transplant, Sabres fan and a no-nonsense hockey mom. ‘You are driven for success, your whole family drives for success.’ Wenzell’s stepson, Patrick Wenzell, plays goalie for the Midget Thrashers.

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J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Local hockey moms say Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is welcome to come play on their team.

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“I was a marshmallow when the kids were younger,” says hockey mom Suzanne Kelly of Suwanee. “But when you see your kids get broken bones, get knocked out, doing flips, you really sort of turn into a werewolf. You feel yourself transforming. You don’t even know that side of yourself.”

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Beware the power of the hockey mom. She will put thousands of miles on her car, plunk down hundreds of dollars for helmets and pads, put dozens of Band-Aids on her hockey child — and put a hurt on you, if necessary.

The spitfire performance of vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday hit home with hockey moms all over the country, who understood her joke comparing them to pit bulls all too well.

“It’s a passion, it’s a breeding, it’s a certain kind of person,” says Adele Wenzell of Lake Oconee, a Buffalo transplant, Sabres fan and a no-nonsense hockey mom. “You are driven for success, your whole family drives for success.”

Wenzell’s stepson, Patrick Wenzell, 14, plays goalie for the Midget Thrashers, a travel league team with a home base at the Ice Forum in Kennesaw. “You want to see your sibling, your son, your daughter, win. It doesn’t come from just playing a sport, it comes from a way of life.”

Most Southern hockey moms appear to be transplants from the north.

Adele Wenzell’s grandparents had Sabres season tickets, and Adele spent her game time in the nose-bleed seats, where the crowd gets loud. “Hockey was everybody’s life,” she said.

Hockey is gaining popularity in Georgia

In football-obsessed Georgia, the sport is growing slowly, she says, its progress helped along by dedicated parents willing to drive kids to six practices a week.

Kelly, a Michigander, had her son on the ice (on double-runner skates) when he was 2 1/2, in a Mini Mite league.

“When we moved here [in 1996] we were the hockey pioneers,” she says. Now hockey has become a letter sport at South Forsyth High School, where her son Niall, 17, is a senior and a member of the team. His big brother Connor, 21, plays hockey for the University of Georgia.

The youngest players are too little to dress themselves or haul their own equipment; Mom has to be there to tie the skates and ice the injuries. In the older leagues, where kids start getting checked, Mom takes it personally.

“It makes me want him to check back,” says Anne Holt of Johns Creek, whose son David, 12, is in a Pee Wee Major team with the Duluth Junior Thrashers.

The professional version of the hockey mom is the agent, says Kevin Kerr, hockey director at the Marietta Ice Center. As coach of the Flint (Mich.) Generals, he had to battle plenty of those.

“I’m not sure who’s meaner, the mom or the agent,” he says. “It’s the mama bear and the baby bear. Hockey moms take it a lot more personal.”

Long days for hockey moms

Days start early for hockey moms. “Some practices start at 6 a.m., and no rink is 10 minutes from your house in Atlanta, so you’re leaving your house at 4:30 in the morning,” said Stephanie Saponari, whose son Vinnie, a freshman at Boston University, just got drafted by the Thrashers.

Weekends, with tournaments in Tennessee, or Florida, or Washington, D.C., start even earlier. You get used to homework and meals in the car, and extra jobs that subsidize the expensive equipment and travel. But still, it’s family time, says Linda Preston, an East Cobb hockey mom to Brian, 16, and Matt, 18.

“How many people can say they’ve spent every weekend with their 17-year-old?” she says.

“I wish I had been a hockey mom,” says Kaylene Johnson, author of the Palin biography “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down.” Published in April, it just jumped into Amazon.com’s Top 20.

“I heard two moms in a coffee shop this weekend and one said, ‘You know, the hockey moms are way tougher than the soccer moms,’” Johnson adds.

About 18 hockey moms gather every Thursday at the Marietta Ice Center to play their own game of hockey. Until the Lady Knights — their tentative team name — began practicing about a month ago, some had never been on skates. They use hand-me-down equipment from their kids, and they’re getting better all the time. Palin, Preston says, is welcome to join them.

“Now they’re really seeing what their kids are going through on the ice, and it’s not as easy as it looks up on the stands,” Preston says.

But you can tell where their kids get their drive.

“They are hell on wheels,” Preston says. “You see those kids and go: ‘I know who your mom is.’ “

— AJC staff writer Phil Kloer contributed to this story.