Already flourishing in Ithaca --where for more than 30 years the Tompkins Girls Hockey Association has introduced hundreds of girls to the game -- the number of females participating in hockey nationwide has quadrupled in the past 10 years.

With the increase in numbers comes more and better competition, as the Ithaca quartet of Maura Grainger, Jill Cater-Cyker, Lucy Schoedel and Carly Dominick-Sobol witnessed first-hand this summer while competing at USA Hockey Select camps.

Grainger, a rising senior at Ithaca High, participated in the 17/18-year-old USA Hockey Select Festival June 19-25 in Lake Placid. Cater-Cyker and Schoedel, both rising juniors, were in Lake Placid from June 25-July 2 for the 15/16 festival. Dominick-Sobol is taking part in the 14-year-old USA Hockey Select Development Camp this week in Rochester.

While Dominick-Sobol is in Rochester, Grainger, Cater-Cyker and Schoedel are playing for the Scholastic Central team this week at the Empire State Games, which begin today.

The scholastic women's games are being conducted at the Polar Cap Ice Rink in Chenango Bridge. The Central team opens play at 6 p.m. today, facing New York.

While the Games features the best hockey players in the state, the competition may be a slight step down to what Grainger, Cater-Cyker and Schoedel faced at the USA Hockey Select camps. There, they went to lectures, ran though drills and played plenty of games against the many of the best players in the country.

"It was extremely high," said Grainger of the level of competition. "It was higher than I expected. It seemed like college hockey. It was a lot faster than I thought it would be. There were no weak links. It was really cool."

Carol Mullins, the former Cornell women's hockey coach who has been involved in the game for more than 30 years, said the improved level of play can be connected to more girls trying the sport at an earlier age.

"By the time they have reached high school and college age, they have played for at least 10 years already," said Mullins, who currently is coaching and evaluating players for USA Hockey at various camps and clinics throughout the country. "This was not the case just 10 years ago, when most girls started playing hockey in high school.

"Each year at the national development camps the talent pool is getting stronger not only because the best players are getting better, but also because there are more great players around the country. Therefore, competition to make a national camp or team is much tougher than it was five years ago."

Nationally, there were 6,336 female players registered with USA Hockey in 1991. In 2003, the number jumped to 45,971.

"There are so many younger kids. The numbers in Ithaca have gone way up," Grainger said. "And it's like that at other places. You can tell that it is growing. There were so many girls from so many different places."

Just how many different places? Dominick-Sobol said one of the highlights for her this week will be meeting up with a friend from Oregon.

The camps aim to help the nation's top young hockey players by gathering the best of the best. Cater-Cyker and Schoedel agreed the competition made them try harder.

"There were a lot of girls who have been playing just as long as I have and they want to play college hockey just like I do," said Cater-Cyker, who has played hockey for 12 years. "They all have something to prove so you want to push yourself harder. It was great to be on the ice with a lot of talented players and people pushing you."

"They had some great girls there," Schoedel said. "It's great to see where you stand."

There were 138 girls, including 18 goalies, at the 15/16 festival. Cater-Cyker had two goals and two assists. Schoedel had a .881 save percentage and 3.00 goals against average, performing well while recovering from an ankle injury.

Grainger competed with 96 girls (eight of them goalies) girls and eight goalies at the 17/18 festival. Although she didn't score, Grainger won a majority of her face-offs.

Dominick-Sobol outshined seven other goalies at a regional tryout to earn the invitation to Rochester.

Mullins said she expects the sport to become even more competitive in the future.

"Girls playing hockey didn't really make sense to most parents before 10 years ago, then they realized there were opportunities for their daughters to play locally or in college," Mullins said. "When the USA women won the gold medal in the 1998 Olympics, women's hockey became, for a moment at least, mainstream and accepted as something girls can play.