Like many women of her generation, 53-year-old Ellen Lowden didn’t grow up playing hockey.

And she confesses she didn’t really know the rules of the game when she enrolled her two daughters in the sport seven years ago.

So when the league organizer tapped her to become a head coach four years ago, Lowden quickly deferred to her hockey-crazed husband, Jim.

But he deferred right back. “He said: ‘No Ellen. You’re the mom and this is girls hockey. You need to be a leader. You have to be a role model.’ ”

“I was never more terrified in my life,” Lowden admits. But she agreed to do it, and with the support and kindness of a couple of dads on the bench, she led her daughter’s team of 7-year-olds to the house league championship that year.

Lowden, who now plays hockey herself in a women’s league and runs a girls hockey clothing business, hopes more mothers take up leadership roles in the sport.

“To me it’s about promoting girls and hockey,” she said. “They don’t have the NHL to go to, but this is an awful lot of fun and a great team thing for moms and daughters to be involved in.”

Lowden was among about 25 hockey moms at the first mother-daughter skate/shinny on Saturday, sponsored by the Toronto Leaside Girls Hockey Association at the Leaside arena.

It is part of a new “Moms Behind the Bench” initiative launched by Andrea Joyce, another mom in her 50s who has coached her 10-year-old daughter and is encouraging others mothers to try coaching.

With about 1,300 players and 80 teams, Leaside is the largest girls hockey association in the city, she noted.

“We have a responsibility to be leading edge, to encourage girls to play and moms to get involved at all levels,” she said.

Although all teams must have at least one woman behind the bench, there are only about 12 female head coaches.

“Women feel they have to be experts, but they don’t,” Joyce said. “They just have to have an understanding of the game. We give them the support. We hook them up with another coach so they can learn from them.

“Sometimes they overthink it,” she said. “But our message is, just get out there and just do it.”

Joyce said she used to be “that woman in the stands yelling and screaming.” Then she looked behind the bench at all the dads and thought: “I want to do that.”

That’s what happened to Amy Colborne, too.

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Her 5-year-old daughter, Reese, has just completed her first season of “learn to play” hockey. But the 38-year-old mother, who grew up figure skating at the Leaside arena, said she’s tired of cheering from the sidelines.

“I signed up to be an assistant coach for next year,” she said after Saturday’s mother-daughter skate. “It looks a lot more exciting behind the bench.”