Nearing the end of her junior hockey career, Samantha Alegranti (12) can look back on over a decade of high-caliber hockey, despite the roadblocks and prejudices she had to overcome along the way.
Alegranti’s dad was always her biggest inspiration, teaching her how to skate and encouraging her to push through hard times.
“My dad taught me how to skate. He got me into hockey,” Alegranti said. “He played. I always wanted to do hockey because he did hockey.”
Alegranti faced plenty of challenges throughout her hockey career, including gender stereotypes and a lack of hockey classes for female players.
“I’ve been playing hockey since I was six years old,” Alegranti said. “It was really hard to get into classes, though, because there were no other girls in the hockey classes. The coaches said, ‘Oh, you’re here for figure skating.’ I was like, no, I’m here for hockey.”
Alegranti wouldn’t take no for an answer. She joined the classes, where she started learning the ins and outs of the sport. Since that moment, she’s climbed to the top of youth hockey. Now the captain of the Monarch girls’ team, Alegranti can safely say she’s made it as a hockey player; but nothing was ever handed to her.
“I used to play against all boys,” Alegranti said. “There weren’t any girls. When I was ten, my coach came up to me and asked me about starting the first girls’ team.”
This idea blossomed into a reality, with Alegranti as a founding member of the new youth team. As their numbers increased, so did awareness and capacity for girls’ hockey in the Boulder area. But even in this new, organized team setting, there was no change in the discrimination Alegranti, or any of her teammates, faced.
“Parents would throw trash at us and boo us when we got on the ice,” Alegranti said. “The parents had a meeting, complaining that whoever played us in the playoffs would be getting a free win because they were boys and we were girls. So they didn’t want us in the tournament.”
Even through the struggle, Alegranti’s love for the sport continued to grow, and hockey emerged as a defining aspect of her life. Above all, the game taught her discipline.
“You gain discipline just by being on the team, knowing your place,” she said. “You can get benched just like that, and you have to respect your teammates and your coaches.”
She especially loves the movement of hockey itself—skating.
“Skating gives you the capability to move in a way that’s so fast and fluid and that a lot of other sports won’t allow you to. I mean, it’s the fastest-moving team sport on the planet, and there’s just so many possibilities for what you can do,” Alegranti said. “I love the feeling. It gives you so much power.”
Alegranti’s work hasn’t gone unrecognized; from her team winning tournaments to a letter from one of her biggest inspirations, her success has left a mark.
“Megan Dugan, the captain of Team USA, actually sent us all a letter congratulating us after we won the championship,” she said.
Alegranti and her Monarch teammates have championship aspirations for this season.
“Monarch is allowed to go to Nationals this year, and to do that, you have to win State,” Alegranti said. “So we want to make a run.”
