In many ways, Cynthia Bronson and her daughter, Sydney Kloth, are a perfect story to show how much girls hockey has grown over the years both in Columbus and nationwide.
When Bronson was growing up in Illinois, opportunities for girls in the sport were few and far between, and she didn’t begin playing – and eventually coaching – hockey until she was an adult.
But living in Central Ohio, she was able to get her daughter on skates at age 2, then coach Kloth with the Columbus Chill Youth Hockey Association. Now a junior at Ohio State, Kloth has followed in her mother’s footsteps as a coach, teaming up with her to mentor the CCYHA 10U girls development team this season.
The two were also on the Nationwide Arena ice together March 7 serving as instructors at the Blue Jackets annual Girls Hockey Day clinic, presented by Bread Financial. The event saw more than 70 girls age 6 to 14 put on the skates and learn from local coaches like Bronson and Kloth, members of the AAA Blue Jackets girls teams, Blue Jackets Hockey League instructors and 2006 U.S. Olympian and Ohio native Kristin King.
After spending more than an hour on the ice running a station together, the mother and daughter duo marveled at just how many girls turned out to see their passion and skill for the game grow.
“It’s definitely a blast, and definitely nice to see the progression in terms of the number of girls out there,” Bronson said. “There’s a huge community, and it’s really expanding, especially over the last 10-15 years.”
For Kloth, the opportunity was there to lace up the skates when she was growing up, but it’s expanded quite a bit even since she was coming through the ranks. In its fourth season of sponsoring girls hockey, the AAA Blue Jackets put three teams on the ice this year, and other local organizations have robust rosters of young women participating as USA Hockey registration among girls has exploded in recent years.
Events like Girls Hockey Day are recent additions to the yearly calendar, though Kloth did have the opportunity as a kid to play a few intermission games during Blue Jackets games, as well as learn from such CBJ players as Boone Jenner and Dalton Prout at summer events.
“I lined up next to Boone Jenner and never felt so small in my life,” Kloth said with a laugh. “I felt really tiny.”
“I have a picture of her with Dalton Prout and she’s barely up to the top of his pants,” Bronson added.
In fact, the thought that she’s now old enough to serve as a coach for the next generation is something Kloth can hardly believe.
“It’s crazy,” Kloth said. “I feel like it’s definitely surreal – like, that I’m old enough to now be coaching is crazy to me. I feel like I’m still that little 14-year-old who was playing, but it’s definitely been a lot of fun.”
And as someone who recently stopped playing the game competitively, Kloth feels a bit of a kinship with the young women she’s mentoring. She has fond memories of growing up in locker rooms, making connections with her teammates and falling for a sport that she’s found a way to stay involved in as she’s gotten older.
“I think for me, it’s just seeing them continue to love the game,” Kloth said. “I feel like as an assistant coach, it’s my role to make sure that they’re still having fun. Seeing that they continue to love the game and they’re loving it a little more each day is really big for me, and making those improvements, too.”
It helps that she has a good mentor in the coaching ranks. Bronson played sports her entire life but didn’t pick up hockey until meeting her husband, Timothy, as an adult. She got into the behind the bench aspect of the sport when her travel team needed licensed coaches, so she started working her way through USA Hockey’s certification processes.
Now a mainstay with the CCHYA, Bronson was one of six female coaches in Central Ohio to attend USA Hockey’s Level 5 coaching symposium this summer, working to achieve the highest level of certification in the body’s coaching pyramid. Her biggest joy comes from seeing the young girls on the CCHYA squad picking up the basics of the game and starting to understand the sport at such a young age.
“That was really nice with our team, being able to see them go from just clumping up on the ice and slowly working on things,” Bronson said. “Each game, it’s, ‘All right, we’re going to add this piece to the puzzle, then we’re going to add this piece,’ because you can’t do it all at once. Definitely with that age, it’s a journey over the season as opposed to being right on it right out of the gate with some of the older levels.”
She did it all with her daughter by her side, as the two have become a big part of the Columbus hockey community simply by staying involved in the game and mentoring the next generation.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Bronson said of coaching with her daughter. “It’s a nice full-circle moment. It’s just another way that she can keep on the ice.”
