Cool Moms On Ice

The term "hockey moms" usually means mothers who drag around their kids' gear and cheer them on from the sidelines.

But times are changing. CBS News correspondent Mika Brzezinski has been searching for women who refuse to fit into the ordinary mommy mold for The Early Show series "Cool Moms." And a new version of hockey moms fits the bill very nicely.

Kathy Hugin, 45, is a stay-at-home mom to three children, a devoted wife and homemaker and … a killer in hockey pads.

On the ice, she's No. 9, right wing for Beacon Hill's "A" division hockey team — a testy team of suburban New Jersey moms over 40, and, when she's on skates, a force of nature you don't want to mess with.

Her team is tough and serious and it has got its own groupies in the form of husbands and children cheering from the stands.

"The other night, we must have had 30 kids out there cheering for us," Hugin told Brzezinski. "I could hear my kids' friends saying, 'Go Mrs. Hugin!' "

The women on the team say the comradery, the exercise and the pure escape make hockey especially cool.

"It's like you're meditating, and there's nothing but the puck," said Shelly Round.

"A lot of women go away together to go to a spa, we go away to go to a hockey camp or a tournament and we think that's the most exciting thing," said Hugin.

And it turns out that smacking a puck around is beneficial for family life, at least according to Hugin.

"It's totally about me when I'm on the ice, but I can come home and say I passed it and it went off the boards, and it was perfect but it didn't work, what did I do wrong, and they'll tell me," she said. "Sometimes they'll draw it for me."

First, her 13-year-old son taught her how to perfect her wrist shot. "Now my 10-year-old is teaching me my snapshot, which I'm still working on, and my daughter teaches me to be aggressive."

And these mothers are finding out how sports can be a great outlet for pent-up emotions.

"You're totally focused on that puck and it's great anger management," Hugin said. "I see it go in the net, and I try to act like no big deal, but that arm always goes up and I go, 'Yes!' "

Brzezinski says these hockey moms also run a non-profit called New Jersey Goals Ahead, which teaches financially disadvantaged kids to play ice hockey for free. The program enrolls children from the Union, Essex and Morris county areas of New Jersey. For more information, call (908) 591-3348.