Palin's take on hockey moms has her on thin ice with some

Dawn Tiorano, with son R. J. in Everett last week, said hockey parents can get intense, often a result of the long hours and big money they invest. (Globe Staff Photo / David Kamerman)

Tina Snook, a mother of four, part-time photo lab technician, and secretary of Everett Revere Youth Hockey, recently started maneuvering this Monday afternoon schedule for her 9-year-old son, Ryan: get him to the ice in Peabody for a 4:15 skill session, then to a 5:15 squirt practice in Everett, and finally to Revere for a select team practice at 6:30.

"It will be like that for 12 weeks," Snook said.

In these early weeks of September, as early-rising, child-shuttling, uniform-washing mothers return to the rinks for another hockey campaign that can carry into April, they have found their seldom-celebrated role a symbol for folksy do-it-all family leadership in the national political debate.

Since Sarah Palin arrived as the Republican vice presidential candidate and self-described pit bull wearing lipstick of a hockey mom, people across the nation have formed fast opinions about a little-known politician. In this region that is a hotbed of youth hockey, hockey moms - as with soccer moms in 1996, NASCAR dads in 2004, and other groups defined in sound bites according to something they do - are reacting in vastly different degrees, from indifference to amusement, from anger to agreement.

Pit bulls with lipstick?

"It's true. It is. People get carried away," said Dawn Tiorano of Revere, as she waited in the chilled lobby of the Allied Veteran's Memorial Rink in Everett for her 14-year-old son R.J.

Tiorano chatted with nearby fathers of children on R.J.'s team. And she admitted things get intense for parents who have invested love, long hours, and big money - sometimes $3,000 or more for fees and equipment alone - in a player on the ice who got checked hard while the referee wasn't looking.

But out at one isolated edge of America, another hockey mom, Jane Rossi of West Tisbury, on Martha's Vineyard, took issue with the pugnacious pose that Palin, governor of Alaska, has struck on the national stage.

"That's the definition of a hockey mom? . . . Maybe she's a pit bull, but I'm not," Rossi said.

Rossi has spent more than a decade supporting two sons who played through high school.

"Yeah, you are running around a lot, always taking them to whatever pond is frozen over so they can play," she said. "I love the games, but I hate the freezing feet."

Unlike past years, when politicians who were neither soccer moms nor NASCAR dads targeted those groups because they represented a certain type of desirable voter - suburban middle-class women or white, Southern working-class men - hockey moms are faced with a candidate who, in one respect at least, is juggling family and work commitments as they are.

"I think it's great she's more common and in tune with us," said Laurie D'Entremont of Malden, who spent a recent Monday evening at Hockeytown USA in Saugus watching her 12-year-old daughter practice for an early-season game.

In nearby stands, Maureen Woodworth of Melrose said Palin's hockey mom credential meant little to her.

"I'm on the PTO [parent-teacher organization], too," Woodworth joked. "I'm like, 'Maybe some time I'll be vice president!' "

The organization USA Hockey counts roughly 350,000 hockey-playing children among its ranks, mostly in northern states. So how big is hockey in a southern swing state such as Florida?

"There is some roller hockey stuff. And Florida State [University] has a club team," said Jennifer Slattery of the Florida Youth Soccer Association, which has 107,000 children playing in its affiliated soccer programs.

Will voters more used to tying children's cleats and applying sunscreen relate to the trials of a cold-weather mother? "I do think [Palin's message] probably does carry over a lot," Slattery said.

The message has already carried over the border. At hockeymoms.com, a website based in Edmonton, an article lamented that Palin's pit bull comparison "perpetuates unfortunate stereotypes about both creatures." The site offered a list of 18 skills a hockey mom would bring to the White House.

The first: Set and manage multiple priorities. The last: Find good coffee.

This month's featured hockey mom on the website hails from Anchorage, just south of Palin's home base of Wasilla. The proximity had nothing to do with why Jamie Walker, a mother of three was chosen, said Liz Goddard, executive director of the site. "It just happened she was up next," Goddard said.

On Wednesday evening, when the temperature would drop below 50 degrees, Walker took time for a phone call before shuttling her sons to an 8 p.m. practice, and praised the merits of hockey, from teaching children teamwork to creating a family focus.

"I work full time," Walker said. "I see [Palin] and I think it's great that she's working hard and with her family."

Walker hopes, though, that people will consider how well she may govern, not just how she has supported a child's sport.

"I hope people don't just vote for her because of that," she said.