*This story appears in the December issue of Wild Magazine.

Minnesotans have an image in their heads of how kids first fall in love with hockey.

They lace up their skates (often with their parents' help), feel the chill of the rink, and from the moment they glide (and maybe crash) onto the ice, they just know.

For Taylor Johnson and Sarah McDonell, senior captains of the Minnetonka Skippers girls' hockey team, the introduction was a bit rockier.

"It wasn't always fun," Johnson said. She described long nights filled with practices and games, how tired she got, how frustrating the game could truly be at times.

"You have to get past that awkward boundary where it's uncomfortable, it's hard," McDonell said. "But the challenge, and overcoming that challenge, is why you stay."

Johnson and McDonell are two of thousands of girls in the state of Minnesota that play high school hockey. They've been playing the game for the better part of their youth, skating side by side in the Minnetonka Youth Hockey Association.

As part of the dynastic Minnetonka girls' hockey program, which won three straight state championships from 2011 to 2013, they've played with their best friends, worked their hardest, and become role models for younger girls on the team.

"All my friends are pretty much from hockey, so it's been really fun to grow up together," Johnson said.

A little more than 20 years ago, their experience wouldn't have been possible, even in a hockey-crazed state like Minnesota. Eric Johnson, their coach and Taylor Johnson's uncle, remembers that time.

'The only choice was to play boys hockey'

Eric Johnson graduated high school in 1991 and went on to play college hockey at St. Cloud State.

Back then, girls' hockey was not yet a high school sport. It wouldn't become one until 1995, 50 years after boys from Eveleth High School won the first Minnesota State High School League hockey state championship.

Johnson recalls that he had a girl on his team through peewees and that she was as good, if not better, than some of the boys. Still, at the next age bracket, her options were limited. When faced with the reality of either giving up hockey or playing with the boys, the girl chose basketball instead.

"There was the occasional girl that played with the boys," he said. "A girl's only option was to play boys hockey."

Glen Andresen, the executive director of Minnesota Hockey, has seen firsthand how girls hockey has grown in the state, especially since the arrival of the Minnesota Wild in 2000.

"There's always been girls that have played, but the opportunities haven't always been there until the last 20 years or so," Andresen said.

Two years after the Wild's arrival, girls' high school hockey teams began splitting into Class A and AA as the boys' teams had done in some form since 1992. That meant more teams and more opportunities.

Part of the problem then, though, was that many high schools with girls teams didn't necessarily have the youth hockey structure to feed and support the high school team.

That caused its own set of headaches for both high school coaches like Johnson and youth coaches. With girls jumping up to their high school rosters at such young ages, other girls' youth teams in Minnesota couldn't always compensate for those missing pieces because the numbers simply weren't there.

Now, after years of steady growth, that's no longer the case.

Read more at Wild.com.