Lyndsey Fry is a former U.S. women's hockey player who won a silver medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, becoming the first Arizona-born athlete of either gender to play hockey at the Winter Olympics. She had 108 points (50 goals, 58 assists) in four seasons with the Harvard women's hockey team.

As someone who grew up in a state where there really wasn't a ton of hockey at all, let alone girls' hockey, Gender Equality Month is really significant. I tell people all the time that every opportunity I've ever had in my life, really all the way back from memories with my family to relationships to moments with teammates, has all come through hockey. So to be able to see that growth for other little girls like me all across the country and around the world is extremely significant.

In addition to all those great things you get through friendships and memories, you also are gaining confidence and a belief in yourself. And I think that's really where the gender equality and the female empowerment movement comes from. So it's been extremely exciting to see and we're just loving growing it here in Arizona.

We've been working really hard on the growth of girls' hockey in Arizona. Our amateur hockey development director Matt Shott has been working hard since I've been in college, so this is something that I would say has really been a sixth-year-in-the-making journey with girls' hockey. I came on, on and off a couple of years ago, and then really got locked in last year when we piloted our first summer of Small Frys, which is our all-girls development program.

What's been so special about that is I think we've had girls' associations and girls' teams pop up here and there for the past 15, 20 years. But now what we're doing is really focusing on the base and focusing on retaining these girls, keeping them involved and getting them to know the other girls so that, when they're 13, 14, when it's their time to switch over to girls-only hockey, they're so emotionally connected to Arizona girls and the community we've built here that they're going to want to stay.

Part of my playing hockey on boys' teams when I was a kid had to do with the fact that there was literally no other option. Girls who were signing up when I was little, we knew this is a boys' sport and we're going to be playing with boys. It was different then because either you were OK with that or you weren't, and if you weren't, you didn't get involved in the sport.

Now girls see at our Little Howlers program and our Learn to Play Program that we have multiple girls in every session. From Day One, girls see, 'Oh, OK I'm not alone. There are other girls who play this sport.' I think that gets them in the door. And then with Small Frys and the Kachinas program and everything we're trying to do with the girls, we get them all together and that's what keeps them there, because they see, 'Wow, this isn't just a boys sport, this is for me.' For me it was just, 'This is what it is, and this is what I know I'm getting into.' And I think that's where this evolution has happened where the girls know there are other girls just like them playing the game.

Seeing the development is really reassuring. It's what keeps us motivated every day. It's not always easy, especially dealing with young kids and particularly young girls. And then you see them develop, you see them making friends and you see them going to each other's birthday parties when they didn't even know each other before our programs. And then you remember, 'Wow, this is what we're doing here. We're building more than a hockey program.' That means the world to us, because we all met our staff with our programs through hockey, and that's what we're doing for these kids. It's so special. It's cliché, but it really is hard to put into words.

The feedback has been great. One comment I got was from a parent who has been a hockey fan his whole life and really wanted to get his daughter involved. She did Little Howlers, and it went OK. She wasn't super excited about it, she was super timid on the ice and didn't really engage much. Then he said when she came to Small Frys, it was night and day. She had confidence, she wasn't afraid to go after the puck, she was having fun, she was smiling when she got off the ice and she can't wait to continue. I mean, she identifies as a hockey player.

Another great moment was when we had a girl who just had her 10th birthday party and she had a roller hockey party. She invited a bunch of girls from the Small Frys and the Kachinas program, and her dad texted me and said, 'Lyndsey, I didn't get it until today.' He basically was saying, I didn't understand what it was that you were creating until I saw all these girls off the ice, hanging out with each other and the friendships they've built. And he was so appreciative of that.

We're just scratching the surface of growing the girls' game, especially here in a western market like ours. We've really just begun. But nationally, the NHL is recognizing this is the market with the most potential. With the explosion of everything, with the women's national teams, the Olympics, the NWHL, the CWHL, it's just everywhere and people are really starting to buy in. The momentum we've seen is just going to continue, and that's super exciting. If you look at it from a business perspective, you look at the market opportunity and the growth potential, it's just an amazing opportunity for us to be involved in. The fact that we have the resources and support of the Coyotes here in Arizona, it's just going to help accelerate that.