Lady With A Puck

Originally Russian article published in Takie Dela
Text and photos by Anna Popova

For over five years, there’s been a women’s hockey team in the town of Velsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast. It’s called Velchanka, and its players are between 55 and 84. Three times a week they step out onto the ice to conquer their fears – and to upend the cliché that all elderly women do in retirement is knit.

“Sometimes,” says Margarita Kress, a resident of the settlement of Kuloy, “you’re traveling here and there and thinking: ‘My God, I’m so tired.’ But then, as soon as you step on the ice, poof – where’d the fatigue go? You see the puck, grab your stick, and take off. No fatigue whatsoever. Now that’s happiness.”

Kress is in her sixties. At first, she was afraid to play hockey, but she took a risk and then even brought along her volleyball friend, Olga Viktorova. Now the two of them travel 30 kilometers three times a week just to practice. “You’d think, we’re grannies over 60, do we need this? But we go anyway, we fall down, we get up, we get hurt. Oh Lord, we’re real daredevils…”

Velsk and Engels

Five years ago, word spread among former students and colleagues of Velsk PE teacher Engels Lopatin: he was putting together a women’s hockey team. The only condition for inclusion: players had to be 50 or older.

Lopatin was born in Velsk in 1941 and has devoted his entire life to sport. He spent sixty years teaching PE at local School No. 4. He formed the town’s first hockey team in the 1960s. He was 78 when he organized Velchanka – the name translates as “woman from Velsk” – while still working as a PE teacher.

The idea of establishing Velchanka was prompted by Ustyanochka, an amateur 50+ women’s team that had started up a year earlier in the nearby settlement of Bereznik. It was the first of its kind in Russia, so there was no other team for them to play. Lopatin promised that his pensioners would learn to play hockey within a month and become “a full-fledged team.” Eight athletes hit the ice for their first practice in 2020. All are Lopatin’s former students, colleagues, and even relatives.

The first to support Lopatin’s idea was his wife Nadezhda, who was a first-class speed skater in her youth. Rheumatism didn’t stop the 80-year-old from becoming a Velchanka defensive player. “At first I could barely hold the stick,” she said. “I started out wearing my glasses in practice, then I took them off. I began being able to see the puck, and then I stopped using glasses altogether in my daily life!”

The couple’s 57-year-old daughter Svetlana is a social worker by day and the team’s center forward on the ice. “For seniors, hockey is tougher than regular amateur play,” she said. “There’s no contact play. We aren’t able to brake in time, we can’t accelerate quickly, we don’t dodge very well, and we absolutely can’t be falling. So, we play carefully, at low speed.” She took her own rookie fall on the ice in stride: “When I first played on artificial ice, I flopped down on the ice like a fish. I got up and was surprised. Every bone in my body cracked, and I was more relaxed. Everything fell into place.”

A Waltz on Ice

“We believe in Velchanka, we believe in winning – no team is better than ours!” That’s what the ladies from Velsk chant as they take to the ice.

Practice starts with a bit of housekeeping: the women have to clear snowdrifts from the rink using scrapers and shovels, deftly flipping piles over the side boards. They joke that it doubles as a warm-up. Then come the passing drills and shootouts, ending with the coach’s unexpected command: “Girls, let’s waltz!” Lopatin uses the waltz to teach dribbling, cultivating grace and fluidity in older athletes who’ve never played hockey before. Waltz music actually pours out of the speakers, and the rink turns into a dance floor as the “girls,” aged 55 to 84, begin to spin on the ice.

At 84, Vera Kashina is a defensive player and the team’s oldest player. A former PE teacher and Lopatin’s colleague and friend, she said she hadn’t put on skates in about 30 years, but the moment she stepped on the ice her feet remembered. Now, along with the elder Lopatina, she helps out newcomers who can’t skate find their balance.

Zoya Zaostrovtseva, 68, is another defender. She’s a former Lopatin student and a retired Senior Warrant Officer in the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN). “There was a piece about me in our agency magazine: ‘Table Tennis, Hockey, and No TV Dramas,’” she said. “I only watch sports, animal shows, and the history chvannel.” She’s been told more than once that hockey is injury-prone and the best pursuits for women her age are knitting, singing, dancing, or cross-country skiing. Zoya doesn’t agree: “In the first place, I want to play. That’s just who I am. Second, through our example we can inspire the young. That matters too.”

Svetlana Davydova, 58, is also a retired FSIN Warrant Officer. She spent 13 years working at the Velsk Penal Colony. She later opened a small window-treatment shop. A friend who played for Velchanka happened to drop in and invited her to join the team. At her first practice, Davydova fell face-first onto her stick. “I came home with a shiner, my baptism by fire,” she said. “Hockey hooked me instantly. On practice days, I start watching the clock basically at lunchtime, praying no one will come into the shop right before closing, so I can bolt early and change.” For her 55th birthday, her kids gave her a full set of hockey gear – shoulder pads, padded shorts, pants. “You can play,” her son said. “But the most important thing to is that you stay healthy and alive.”

Velchanka’s goal is guarded by Tatyana Akinkhova, 55, a speech therapist. She’s long been a hockey mom: in the early 2000s, her oldest son played for the local team, Zarya. While he was a student, Tatyana and other parents would drive the kids to tournaments and even shovel and flood the rink. When he grew up and left Velsk, Tatyana found that she missed the sporting life, and so, when she heard about the women’s team, she burned with a desire to join. At first, she shut her eyes when catching the puck and got very upset at herself if a shot got past her into the net. At her first practice, she said she fell on the ice and lay there thinking she’d never return. But the desire to skate won out. “Sometimes you bat away the puck or catch it, and it feels like you’ve learned to take life’s hits,” she said.

The Bread Loaf and the Persian Rug

At first, Lopatin coached the team by himself; later his son Alexander started helping. Last summer, when Alexander moved to St. Petersburg, another retired PE teacher, Nikolai Sheryagin, stepped in to help coach. He’s 64 and still plays for the men’s team, Molodyozhka (for ages 45 to 65).

Sheryagin coaches Velchanka as a volunteer: “I’m no professional. As a PE teacher, I wanted to test myself – to see how well a non-pro can train others.”

Once a month the players – most of whom are on a fixed income – chip in 500 rubles (about $5) for locker-room repairs, hangers, supplies, pucks, whistles, kickboards, even gifts for opponents at games. More than anything, they hope that someday someone will take them under their wing the way that Ustyanochka is supported by the Ustyansky Timber Industry Complex (ULK). Their rivals have a fitness hall and can train year-round. In fact, Ustyanochka trains all year with Maria Onolbayeva, a repeat Russian hockey champion and member of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic team.

Velchanka, by contrast, has no financial backing. The women buy their own gear. Though this year ULK lent them equipment so that Ustyanochka would have worthy rivals on the ice.

A proper Zamboni (ледозаливочный комбайн or ice-pouring combine in Russian), which would cost several million rubles, is also out of reach. The rink is flooded by a homegrown contraption featuring a UAZ “Bukhanka” (a “bread loaf” minivan), barrels of hot water, and a threadbare Persian rug. The indefatigable Engels Lopatin devised a setup that feeds boiling water from the barrels through special valves onto the ice, while the rug spreads the water evenly to leave a smooth, glossy surface.

Despite all the hype around regional “active longevity” programs, the Velsk hockey women get zero financial support from local authorities. Only once – in 2023 – did the team win a municipal subsidy: the R87,000 ($900) went toward a season-opening tournament. And a hoped-for governor’s grant didn’t pan out: in the “Active Longevity” category for 2025, as in 2023, the winners were the Billiards Federation and a Severodvinsk project promoting Nordic walking for seniors.

The Scarf Rule

The locker room hums as players wrestle into their heavy pads and get ready to play. Svetlana Lukovitskaya’s resonant voice rises over the din: “Ladies, who wants a little lipstick?” Svetlana has a ritual: before the game, she ties a pale-pink silk scarf around her neck and applies peach-colored lipstick. She says that, since instituting this procedure, the team hasn’t lost.

The stands at Bereznik’s Ice Palace, where Velchanka faces their rivals from Ustyanochka, are all but empty. Just a handful of women from a supporting group and some young players who practice at the rink. But the game is serious. Velchanka makes repeated attacks on the goal, though Ustyanochka skillfully holds them off. Fired up, the women bang their sticks on the boards, eager to get back on the ice. The teens smirk at first, then get caught up in the excitement, pounding on the glass and shouting, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

“Velchanka, you’re the best! We love you!” yells a woman in the stands wearing a lilac beret and a tinsel scarf, and her friends join her in cheering.

The match ends in a draw. They played only two periods – this was decided by the host team, which has veto power in such matters. Afterward there is a traditional friendly tea with the opponents.

A Stick for the Brain

District Deputy Chief Physician Svetlana Lukovitskaya has been with Velchanka for five seasons and has no intention of quitting. “So many songs about men who play hockey!” she said heatedly. “I’m not disputing that it’s a men’s sport. But I don’t think women don’t belong there. None of us is trying to prove anything to men. We just want to better ourselves. We want to feel like winners, to get that psychological lift: I can do it, I did it, good for me!”

Yelena Kalinina is the team’s captain. Slight and petite, the 57-year-old runs an agricultural consumer cooperative in daily life and is one of the team’s best on the ice. Age and gender stereotypes when it comes to hockey have shadowed her throughout her life. But she’s certain you need to develop as a person and not live to please others. “We bring femininity into the sport because we don’t have any ‘tough guys.’ We’re not aggressive toward our opponents. We go out on the ice for ourselves: to run around, joke around, feel like kids again, laugh, and to build our fitness, to develop our brains. Hockey is a game that requires smarts.”

“In my view, hockey is drive, excitement, camaraderie, a beautiful goal born of teamwork, and emotions you can’t put into words,” said Tatyana Podobayeva, a lawyer who joined the team this season. “So why can’t this be a women’s sport? Women feel all the same emotions as men. And women skate beautifully, can handle their sticks, and can deliver a solid check into the boards.”

“By the way, women’s hockey has been an Olympic sport for a long time – not just men’s,” said Galina Petukhova, 66, a retired PE teacher, surprised anyone would ask.

As a matter of fact, Velchanka is friendly with the men’s Molodyozhka team (captained by Nikolai Sheryagin). They sometimes play friendlies. And, during the game, the men don’t steal the puck away from the women. “They like supporting us,” Petukhova explains. “They have a rule: if a lady has the puck – you don’t touch the lady!”

“We Turned Everything Upside Down”

In Velsk, population 25,000, hockey is the most popular sport, but there’s no proper Ice Palace. So practices and games depend on the weather – much to the frustration of former mayor Viktor Sheryagin (twin brother of the Velchanka coach). Back in the mid-2010s, Engels Lopatin set out to build a covered rink so that locals could train year-round. The city administration supported the idea; Viktor Sheryagin brought in sponsors; the project passed state review. Residents even chose a site and held public hearings. But in 2011 the budget fell short and the arena didn’t get built. Then Vladimir Butorin, owner of the timber complex, built a Sports Palace in Bereznik, bought a bus, and Velsk’s youth teams started traveling there for practice.

Velsk tried again in 2016. The project was shown to Butorin, who decided to upgrade it – more spectator seats, landscaping around the site. Butorin and Sheryagin signed documents and leased the land. A local park was taken out, the site was fenced in, and the foundation was poured. Opening was slated for March 2021. Then COVID hit. Construction paused. A year later, they took up the project again and even brought in steel in February 2022. But, after the start of the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine and subsequent economic sanctions against Russia, all that remains is a vacant lot and a crooked fence where the park used to be. Meanwhile, Velsk’s boys and girls still come out with beat-up old sticks to chase the puck around on a flooded outdoor rink.

Even so, Velchanka’s players believe the town’s hockey future belongs to everyone. “We’ve turned things a bit upside down and proved it’s not just a men’s sport,” said Svetlana Davydova.

There’s still no girls’ hockey team in Velsk. But Galina Sharapova, 39, who manages a shop, trains with Velchanka. She dreams of becoming the team’s best player. They don’t take her to games against their Ustyanochka rivals yet – she’s too young.

Late one evening, after their match against Ustyanochka, the Velchanka squad returns home by bus. The road, the snow, the darkness all conspire towards drowsiness, but no one is sleeping in the bus. The women are singing: “Real girls play hockey, cowards don’t play hockey.” Someone corrects them: “No, we need to sing about us Velsk women. Real Velchanki play hockey!” They each sing in their own way, but all of them together.