Silene and Rupert Gordon’s daughter Natalia has had a passion for hockey since she started playing at age five, but her parents worried about where she would channel that passion once she got to high school.

There aren't girls hockey teams at area schools.

“For girls in Bourne, Mashpee, and Wareham who didn’t take the private school route, there were no options” for hockey, said Silene Gordon.

So when her daughter was in 5th grade, Gordon, who lives in Bourne, started reaching out to hockey parents in other towns, including Annette and Bryan St. Germaine of Wareham, to organize a girls cooperative hockey team.

“I want to stress that it’s a combined effort,” said Gordon.

Now, after two seasons as a junior varsity squad, the Bourne-Mashpee-Wareham Girls Hockey team is going varsity.

Not long ago, the parents lobbied their respective School Committees for support of the JV team, and got the go-ahead. (Unfortunately, they were unable to get funding, and so the team raises the more than $15,000 needed for each season through fundraising efforts.)

The parents then had to do some outreach in the three schools in search of potential players.

Hockey is a contact sport, and brawls are a regular feature  -- and for some people, the main draw -- of professional hockey games.

“We’ve definitely had parents say, ‘I just don’t know about this,'” said Silene Gordon. “We definitely had to explain it to people who hadn’t experienced youth hockey before.”

But, Gordon said, the perception of hockey as some kind of free-for-all blood sport is a hyperbolic interpretation.

“It’s such a fast game that inevitably there’s going to be contact. It's very physical,” she noted. "Even though you can’t just take someone out, they get their share of bruises.”

So the BMW program -- and its catchy name -- took off.

While the girls could have been a varsity squad from the jump, Gordon thought it would be prudent to compete as a junior-varsity squad first, so the girls could gain the skills they would need to be a competitive varsity team.

Girls hockey has grown in popularity over the years, and the competition to get on a college team is fierce. Now that they have a high school varsity team to play for, the Bourne, Mashpee, and Wareham girls have a fighting chance at snagging one of those college spots.

The team will be squaring off against more established programs. Gordon says the girls' two years playing as a junior varsity team have prepared them well.

“This being our first varsity year, I think our goal is to be competitive, to continue moving the program forward,” said Gordon.