From the first time Deb Demski stepped on the ice at the age of 10, she wanted to play hockey.

In the early 1980s, though, there weren’t many girls playing hockey in her hometown of Livonia, so her parents encouraged her to try figure skating instead.

That lasted about six months.

“Figure skating was not for me. I was a bit of a tomboy and would have preferred hockey pants,” said Demski, a clinical research coordinator on the Concussion Center team at the School of Kinesiology.

Demski went on to play many other sports — and she enthusiastically cheered on the Detroit Red Wings. But she didn’t step on the ice again until she was in her 30s.

“It was around 2006, and I was teaching spin and strengthening classes. I’d created a group called Inside Out, where we worked on self-improvement and weight loss from the inside out,” Demski said.

“I would challenge the group weekly to step outside their comfort zone. Then one day, one of the students challenged me back. She was like, ‘You always talk about loving hockey. Why don’t you try it?’”

Demski accepted the challenge and got back out on the ice — this time in hockey skates, not figure skates — and joined a house co-ed hockey league.

“Luckily, I wasn’t afraid to fall because in the first six months of learning to play you’re definitely running into walls and falling a lot,” Demski said.

“But I’d played lots of sports before, so it didn’t bother me, and, of course, in hockey you’re well padded. The other players were also easier on us because they knew we were new to the game.”

During that first season, Demski scored a goal — by “pure luck,” she insists — in a game, grabbing the attention of some women on the opposing team. After the game, they asked Demski if she’d like to come skate with their senior women’s travel team, Swarm.

“That was the beginning of my time skating with Swarm, and they’ve been my team ever since,” Demski said.

Demski played defense for Swarm for more than a decade but switched to forward three years ago “because I was spending too much time in the penalty box,” Demski said, laughing.

She describes Swarm as extraordinarily close-knit.

“We’re family. Since I joined in around 2007, we’ve had a few players come and go but the majority have stayed the same. We all have nicknames, too,” Demski said.

One of Demski’s nicknames is “Cheddah” (cheddar said with a Boston accent) because she and her teammates love cheese. “We also have a Swiss, a Pepper Jack and a Mozzarella,” she said.

Some of her teammates also call her “Grace” — because of her lack of it off the ice.

“If I am not playing sports or doing some sort of exercise, I can be a little klutzy,” Demski said. “A few years ago, before a practice, I forgot to take off my skate guards, and let’s just say I never realized I could do the splits. We had a good laugh.”

Swarm’s home rink is in Brighton and, during the winter season, they have a home game or practice at 5:30 p.m. Sundays. They also have away games throughout the week and may travel to Ann Arbor, Detroit, Plymouth, Southfield, Shelby Township or Rochester.

Afterward, they go out for dinner as a team.

They also get together occasionally for “sticks and pucks” (informal hockey practice open to the public), and they’ve played in pond hockey tournaments outside the regular winter season. Twice a year they go to a retreat at the cottage of their teammate “Swiss.”

“We’ve been there for each other through the good and bad, and I think that’s part of the reason, compared to other teams, that we still have the same core people,” Demski said.

“Even when I’m busy and think, ‘I can’t fit in a game,’ as soon as I get to the rink, we’re just laughing and having fun. It’s such a stress reliever.”

Players must be 19 or older to play on Swarm, so Demski’s teammates range from college age to 73 years old, but most are middle-aged.

“We are one of the older women’s teams now, and a few years ago, we got moved to a lower level and were ecstatic,” Demski said, laughing.

“There was a time when we were like, bring it on. Now we’re like, thank god. We’re still competitive and want to play a good game, but we’re doing this mainly for fun — and we need to get up and go to work the next morning.”

Demski has suffered a few injuries over the years — to her shoulder and her elbow. And she’s had two concussions, a little ironic, she said, given her role at U-M. She also says her postgame recovery time is a bit longer than it used to be.

That said, Demski and Swarm are crushing it on the ice this season and are currently ranked No. 1 in their league. They also stand a good chance to win the end-of-season tournament in March.

Demski remains a realist, though. The Swarmies, as they call themselves, have won — and lost — many tournaments since 2007, and Demski knows that anything can happen on a given game day. For the most part, these days, the team just enjoys being together on the ice.

“We are so cohesive. We know each other so well … and we’ve played together so long that we might not be the fastest out there, but we’re very consistent and never give up,” she said.

While no one is currently talking about retirement — not even “Flash,” the 73-year-old forward — Demski knows that day will come eventually, and they have a plan.

“When the team ends, it will be hard,” she said. “But we all joke that we’re just going to buy a cul-de-sac of cottages and take up another sport together, like pickleball.”

Tags:

• ice hockey
• School of Kinesiology