All roads lead back to The Mighty Ducks.

 

At least in the case of Shelby Burden.

 

The City High senior began playing hockey 10 years ago after her brother, who is four years older, grew enamored with one of the most popular movies of the 1990s.

 

“He started playing because he watched The Mighty Ducks movie and absolutely loved it,” Burden said. “I started playing because I watched him play and I thought it looked really fun.”

 

Burden signed a national letter of intent last week to play Division I hockey at Liberty in Lynchburg, Va., despite few hockey programs in Iowa City and zero high school-sanctioned teams in the state of Iowa. Burden played on multiple travel teams over the years, including the Iowa City Blizzards and Cedar Rapids Lady RoughRiders, but a program about 275 miles away was the breakthrough – the St. Louis Lady Blues.

 

The Lady Blues are a U19 team in the AAA division, the highest level in girls' hockey. Not dissimilar to Burden, a majority of the team is from out of the area.

 

“For our roster, she’s the norm,” Lady Blues coach Mark Hallemann said. “Only seven of the 20 girls on our team are from St. Louis. There’s not a lot of AAA teams in those areas (that out-of-town players come from). We allow out-of-town players because we’re trying to build the best team that we can. From a coaching standpoint, I have to count on the girls doing their work from home since they’re not here all the time.”

 

For over a year now, Burden typically travels three weekends per month to play with the Lady Blues. Those include tournaments plus practices. Tournaments are mainly North or East, including three trips to Canada so far.

 

Despite the uniqueness of the situation, Burden is still en route to play collegiately. Liberty is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation by the American Collegiate Hockey Association and is the defending national champion.

 

“If I would have started playing at the AAA level earlier, I probably would have been able to find it easier to talk to coaches in order to get recruited,” Burden said. “I definitely had limited time. By the time I started playing last year as a junior, it was hard. A lot of coaches recruit early. There weren’t many spots left.”

 

The last few years, Burden has played forward but she also has experience on defense.

 

Hallemann noted the 5-1, left-handed Burden should fit in the mix with Liberty.

 

“Shelby is a workhorse,” Hallemann said. “She’s a grinder-type player. She gives 100 percent on every shift, she never takes off a shift. Her work ethic is good as anybody else on the team. She’s dedicated to getting better, she comes to practice prepared. … Liberty is going to be a very good fit for her. She’ll do well there.”

 

Ultimately, Liberty head coach Paul Bloomfield and his program clinched a commitment from Burden.

 

“They were the last college that I visited out of about five,” Burden said. “Just the atmosphere was just so much better out of any of the campuses that I had been on. The coach was respectful, wanted to show us around.

 

“You’d think any coach would be like that, but some of the other ones I talked to were kind of going through the motions. Coach Bloomfield wanted to have a coach-player relationship even before I committed. That sold me a lot.”

 

Article written by Matt Cozzi from Iowa City Press-Citizen.