In the middle of the imposing players kneeling on the ice around their coach, a head with an angelic appearance and a flamboyant red braid stands out. In recent weeks, Justine Crousy-Théode, 22, has been making a lot of talk about her. For her sporting performances but also for an unusual characteristic: for two seasons she has been the strong-willed goalkeeper of the Phénix, the men’s ice hockey team from Reims which plays in the second division.
“I always played with the boys,” she explains from her height of six feet, wrapped in her enormous goalkeeper gear. “In ice hockey, the teams are mixed among the youngest. In senior, women can continue to play with boys only as goalkeepers,” explains their coach, Ivan Bock. A practice which remains rare in France and which allows the Federation to “keep its daughters” while the women’s championships are struggling to gain ground in the country, even if “it’s starting to happen”, assures Justine who is also part of the French women’s team.
“Back-up”, she is a reserve goalkeeper and intervenes on the field “in case of problems” for the main goalkeeper. His coach can also decide to give him playing minutes. Like during their meeting with Colmar in mid-December where she started in goal. A match which allowed her to stand out since she achieved a shutout. That is to say, she did not let any pucks enter her cage. A performance praised by the press and by the Minister of Sports, who retweeted the record on Watch our report at the top of the article.
