The History of The Sign Girls

First off, welcome to our new blog! I thought I’d start off with a little history of why we call ourselves the sign girls.

I have very little drawing ability, but I had always wanted to make signs to bring to games for my favorite players. Luckily, my best friend and fellow hockey fan Sarah is an incredibly talented artist. She started her sign work with a Marty Turco sign, complete with the gargoyle he had on his mask at the time. The sign got an amazing reception at the games. It seemed like everyone we ran into complimented us on her artistry. Next was the always embarrassing “Nine is Mine” sign for Mike Modano with a great big drawing of his face on the sign. I held this up to the glass with pride as Mike Modano himself laughed and pointed at the sign.

Even though the lockout was a sad time for most, it gave way to our greatest sign “accomplishment”. I was ecstatic to hear that Brenden Morrow (my most favorite player ever) was going to be playing in our town for the Oklahoma City Blazers. Tyler Fleck, I have never loved you so much in my life! Sarah and I knew that we needed to have a sign to welcome Brenden to Oklahoma City, but we were short on time because of marching band, musical practice, and other unimportant things not related to hockey. So we made our sign while standing in line to get tickets to the game. It was a humble sign – it simply said “We <3 You Brenden!” in green with various star designs on a few pieces of computer paper. Eventually she made another sign in Blazers colors saying the same thing. We were sure Brenden saw them. After all, we were the only girls with signs and the only girls in Stars jerseys at every game. I think we have embarrassed him because he always put his glove over his face when he would skate past us.

I had the opportunity to meet him at a small dinner while he was in Oklahoma City. I didn’t mention anything about the signs when I went up to get autographs, but my mother went up to him and asked if he had seen the “crazy sign girls” during the pregame skate. He blushed and said he saw us every game. I went up to him again later that night and sure enough, he knew who I was. At the next game he didn’t pretend not to notice us, he actually hit the glass in front of us with his glove.

We brought back the well-loved Brenden sign at the first game we got to attend after the lockout. Like old times, Brenden skated by with his glove over his head. Success! He remembered us!

During this most recent (and very long) offseason, Sarah had the most brilliant idea after firing Doug Armstrong. We could make a portfolio of signs so we could have an easy way to carry all of our signs. She got busy and made signs for Brenden, Marty, our Finns, etc. You will see us before the game with our flipping between signs from our “book”.

 So there is the not so brief history of how we came to be the sign girls. I hope you all enjoy the blog!

 Amy