(RNN)
- What do bikinis, hockey, and Bruce Willis have in common? They're all
part of a new league that aims to bring competitive hockey back to life
- in bikinis.
The
Bikini Hockey League (BHL) hopes to combine roller hockey and reality
show programming with sex appeal. Take a look at some of the league's
star players.More >
And yes, there are fights. Sort of.
The
Bikini Hockey League
(BHL) combines roller hockey and reality show programming with sex
appeal. The concept is this: 10 women, ranging in ages from 19 to 39,
are put up in a mansion in Tulsa, OK. They're placed on teams,
simultaneously fitted for bikini tops and hockey helmets, and then they
go out and play hockey.
As the cameras roll, the players build
friendships, get on each other's nerves, and compete - both in the house
and on the rink. What's surprising is that although the players
look good
in bikinis, they also know how to play the game.
"When the girls came to town for the filming
of the reel, within five minutes of watching them scrimmage, you're just
in awe of how good they were," said Chris Wallace, the BHL's
Developmental Director. "You forget that they're even wearing bikini
tops."
That might not be entirely true. But what is true is that the players have talent, such as Erin Honto.
Honto describes herself as an "
aggressive defenseman" who can take the body.
"The puck might get past me," she said, "but the player will never get past me."
Honto played men's ice hockey throughout high
school and college. As a teenager, she was named to the Lake Placid Top
50 in the U.S. Junior Olympic Camp.
When playing in college, Honto said she would hide the fact she was female by wearing a bandanna and not talk.
Honto's day job is modeling, and when she's
not taking the body, she's showing the body - on runways and billboards.
So it was surprising that she was willing to risk some bruises by
getting into a fight during a game.
It started with some trash talking on the
first day between Honto and Jules Mernaugh, a roller derby player who
has dabbled in mixed martial arts.
"I called her a (expletive) on the first day and it went from there," Honto said.
After some verbal back and forth in the mansion, the women took it to the rink.
"One of the girls let me take the face-off
and I dropped (Mernaugh)," Honto said, laughing. "I think she had to
leave the game after that."
Other players who have the hockey chops and
bikini bodies include Jessica Frump, who played Division I hockey for
Syracuse University and Sophia Goulet, who currently plays hockey for
Ohio State University and was awarded Maine's athlete of the year in
2011.
The mix of bikini-clad women battling in and
out of the rink is what Wallace hopes will bring viewers to the reality
show and spectators to the games.
Wallace and co-founder Cary Eskridge are
currently in talks with Cheyenne Enterprises, a production company
co-owned by Bruce Willis and producer Arnold Rifkin. The pilot is still
in the post-production phase and a release date has not yet been
determined.
But with the NHL in a lockout for the third time in eight years, that date could come sooner rather than later.
"Everyone is scrambling for hockey content," Wallace said.
