Sarah Palin put hockey moms on the map in 2008, proclaiming she was “just an average hockey mom” at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

But hockey moms have been packing bags and tying skates much longer, including three Albert Lea women who have raised multiple hockey players, including sons and daughters.

Each hockey season, they’re not just mothers to their own children, but to any kid that crams its smelly bag into their SUVs to ride along to a weekend tournament.

It’s a chaotic job that can at times be heartbreaking, but they wouldn’t change it for the world.

“I love it,” Robin Carstens said, of being a hockey mom. “You think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go out to the arena again,’ but it’s fun.”

Carstens, along with Kim Lundak and Tiff Syverson, each have 11- and 12-year-old sons playing on the Albert Lea ‘A’ Peewee team.

Sitting alongside each other at the City Arena Saturday afternoon, these three women were the most vocal parents in the stands, shouting encouraging words to their sons gliding around the ice and hanging their heads in disappointment each time the other team scored.

“The moms are like the cheerleaders,” Lundak said. “The dads don’t really like to sit with us because we yell.”

Syverson admits that dealing with disappointed sons is the toughest thing about being a hockey mom, and Lundak agrees.

“I don’t like when they’ve lost a big game and they’re sad,” she said.

Carstens said being a hockey mom requires a lot of time in the car and being able to manage multiple schedules.

All three women have had two different aged children playing hockey at the same time and that requires driving to the City Arena up to four times a night, four times a week — not to mention weekend tournaments.

With four tournaments each winter, the moms take turns driving up to four kids to places like Red Wing and Chippewa Falls, Wis.

“We share a lot of responsibilities between everyone’s kids,” Syverson said. “We carpool and feed each other’s kids, but we all get along and like to help out.”

Carpooling comes with a downside, though.

“When you have four stinky boys and four stinky bags and it’s your turn to drive,” Syverson said, “that’s the worst.”

Carstens said you can’t contain the bag’s smell and that you have to wash what you can and air everything out.

“There’s no getting used to it,” Lundak said. “You’d think 11-year-old boys wouldn’t smell but they do.”

Carpooling also requires a lot of space for sticks, pads and bodies, so each woman drives an SUV.

“You can have a car but you’re not going to bring anybody else,” Syverson said.

Not only do the women’s weekends revolve around hockey but their social lives do too.

“It becomes who you hang out with,” Carstens said. “A lot of us are friends outside of hockey, too.”

And all three women admit it’s going to be sad when it’s over.

Lundak, whose daughter Madi Passingham grew up playing hockey and graduated from Albert Lea High School, can’t pull herself to watch a varsity girls’ hockey game because she misses it so much.

“It’s horrible,” Lundak said. “I can’t watch because it’s too sad.”