Hockey Queen

>>Tiffany Esposito’s position at a local public relations firm requires mental and physical agility to keep pace with ever-changing work situations.

Fortunately, the 21-year-old, known as a "junior PR guru" at Bonita Springs-based Pushing the Envelope, has been thinking on her feet—and on the ice—for years. Ice hockey keeps her sharp.

Growing up in Southwest Florida, Esposito strapped on her first pair of blades when she was 8 years old, at the same time her younger brothers were playing hockey. She decided to give the game a chance, and hasn’t stopped since.

"I love it; it’s just so much fun," says Esposito, who also is a senior at Florida Gulf Coast University, where she’s majoring in communications. "It’s a great stress-reliever. You can go out there and take all your energy and stress from the entire week and just let it go."

At one point, she played on three teams, but now she belongs to only one, called the Ice Queens, which consists of 10 women and three men. It’s the only team that is predominately female in the men’s league, which has eight teams total playing at Germain Arena.

Do the guys ever go easier on her because she is a woman? "Sometimes in the beginning of the game they tend to not go into the corners as hard," she says, "But then when we go into the corners, they realize they don’t need to take it easy on us. We’re not fragile."