GM vs. Ford women’s charity hockey game is ultimate rivalry

The ice crackled under the skaters' blades as they took to the outdoor rink at Clark Park in southwest Detroit that bone-chilling night in February 2019. The skaters recalled the rich smell of smoking wood that penetrated the air as spectators huddled around nearby fire pits for warmth. There had been driving snow from a blizzard earlier that day. Still, more than a 150 people braved the elements to be there.

In the center of the rink stood three women. One, wearing a blue jersey, who worked for Ford Motor Co. She slapped her hockey stick on the ice and eyed her opponent across from her. That woman, who worked for General Motors, donned a grey jersey with a yellow Chevrolet bowtie emblazoned on it. In between them stood GM CEO Mary Barra, who dropped the puck and it was on.

Forget about U-M versus MSU. Or the Lions versus the Packers. The Women’s Automotive Cup hockey game possibly tops both for the ultimate rivalry. It is an event that started in 2018 and for five of the last six years, it has been a faceoff between auto industry titans: GM and Ford. Last month, for the sixth annual game, the GM team did a scrimmage against itself because Ford could not get a women's team organized. But Ford players hope to be there again next year. If not, GM is ready to challenge women hockey players who work at crosstown rival Stellantis or for a large supplier.

The game looks, sounds and feels competitive, and it is — except for one thing: It is good natured with the goal of raising as much money as possible for charity — so the gloves stay on and no fights break out. Not only do the car companies compete on the ice, but they also compete to see which one can raise the most money (GM has always won that part of it).

In total, the event has raised more than $96,000 since its inception, the biggest grossing year was in 2023. At the time, GM and Ford were tied with each winning two of the four annual games, so that was the year of the "Grudge Match" to break the tie — more on that later.

The money raised goes to Clark Park and Matrix Theatre Company, both of which offer programs to help underprivileged kids either play hockey or learn all aspects of theater.

"When we are out there, we play hard," said Birdie Buckley-Ball, a tactical operations supervisor at GM and the woman who started the Women’s Automotive Hockey Cup in 2018. "If the puck’s in the corner, there’s body contact. But the women understand what we’re there for, so there is no ego or bravado that takes over. I always say, 'It’s for the children! Put money in the bucket and have a good time.’”

The birth of a rivalry

The women on the ice are just as compelling as the rivalry and it's an apropos time to talk about them during Women's History Month.

Buckley-Ball, 46, has been called Birdie as long as she can remember. In fact she didn't even know her real name until she was in fifth grade, she said.

"It’s Roberta, but I am in the process of legally changing it to Birdie because even on my high school diploma it says Birdie," Buckley-Ball told the Free Press.

She has worked 22 years for GM. In her job, she works with suppliers on timing to mitigate any risk of a supply chain disruption to production. Outside of her job, hockey is her passion.

“Hockey is like no other sport in the world," Buckley-Ball said. "There are no out of bounds. If you run your mouth and someone’s after ya, it’s just you and the boards. It’s also the best team sport I’ve ever played. When a team wins, a hockey player never goes out there and says it was because, ‘I scored this goal or I did that.’ It’s ‘My team did this.’ And when you lose, it’s always, ‘I didn’t step up to the challenge.’ "

Buckley-Ball grew up playing hockey in Goodrich, which is about 16 miles southeast of Flint, where the kids skated "in the backyard." She was about 5-years-old when she started playing hockey. She's played competitively in high school and for a year at Wayne State University. For the past 20 or so years, she's played on the Michigan Senior Women’s Hockey League, a recreational league with more than 40 teams of all levels and 600 women who play in them. But it was in 2017, while she was playing in a summer hockey league at Buffalo Wild Wings Arena (previously Troy Sports Center), when inspiration struck.

"I’m looking around the locker room and I have a ton of people I know from GM and seven or eight women from Ford. A lot of automotive people play hockey," Buckley-Ball said. “So I was driving home and telling my wife about it and at the time she worked for Matrix Theatre Company and she’s always looking for ideas for fundraisers. So she’s like, ‘Do you think you could get a game together between GM and Ford for a fundraiser?’ I was like, 'Absolutely.' ”

Buckley-Ball started making calls to her hockey acquaintances at GM and at Ford, thinking, "I’d be lucky if I got 12." She got 25 women at GM to agree to play and about 20 at Ford. Her youngest player was 23 and the oldest was 65.

She found a mother and daughter referee duo so as to keep it "almost all women." The Detroit restaurant Green Dot Stables donated sliders and Motor City Brewery Works donated beer for that first game — and has done so ever since. She asked for a $5 donation at the door, for people to donate money when they got their beer and burgers, held raffles and Chuck-a-Puck, a game held during intermission where fans pay for a chance to throw a puck toward a jackpot bucket in the center of the rink to win a prize. She marketed the event with some fliers and word-of-mouth, pitching it as a family event, "something that hadn’t been done before so come out and see it."

“We didn’t know what to expect," Buckley-Ball said. "We had about 300 people show up for the first game, which we were not prepared for. It was a great game, we raised just over $10,000 that day.”

GM raised $7,000 of that $10,000, so it won that part of the money-raising contest. But Ford won the game, 7-5.

“It was six to five and I pulled my goalie in the last minute and they scored," Buckley-Ball said. "(Ford) had the Schmitt twins, they went to Ohio State University Division 1. They are amazing skaters. It was a great game, back and forth, good play. So Ford won the game. We made a deal that whoever brings in the most money gets naming rights next year so it’s always been GM versus Ford because GM’s raised the most money.”

The Schmitt twins

Kari Schmitt, 31, and her identical twin sister, Sara Schmitt, both worked at Ford in 2018 when the Women's Automotive Cup started. The twins had been on skates almost as long as they could walk. At age 4, they started developing their skating skills in the basement of their parents' home in Canton on roller blades, Kari Schmitt told the Detroit Free Press.

When their parents realized the twins could skate, their father bought an outdoor ice rink for the backyard. Their older brother was on a hockey team, so the toddler girls joined the Mini-Mite hockey program at age 5 to learn the skills of the game. They became good enough to play on boys teams until age 13 when they got on a girls team. The two made it all the way to Ohio State University to play Division 1 hockey where they were often defensive partners on the ice and off it.

"It was cool to go to school with my sister and play together," Kari Schmitt said. "She’s my best friend, so it was the best.”

Today Sara works for a different company, but Kari is still at Ford working as a software engineer. The twins got involved in the Women’s Automotive Cup after “someone reached out” to them to play in it, Kari Schmitt said.

"I thought it was really interesting because not only was it a Ford versus GM rivalry, but you got to play for charity," she said.

Schmitt played in the event for three years. She can't remember details of each game, but she does remember scoring a goal in 2020, though she's modest about her skills.

"I was pretty good," Kari Schmitt said. "I love working on a team and getting that camaraderie. In the women’s game you can’t check, but I grew up playing boys hockey until I was 13, so I enjoy the physical piece of it as well.”

Ford wins again

The Schmitt twins, who still play hockey together on a metro Detroit men's league every Friday night, helped Ford win again in 2019 with a score of 4-2 because, "same thing I pulled my goalie with a minute left," said Buckley-Ball.

But GM raised $10,549 and Ford raised $6,786 for a total of $17,335 that year for the charities, despite the blizzard reducing attendance from 300 in 2018 to 150 in 2019. But having Barra there helped generate interest in the event continuing. Schmitt said she was impressed to see Barra, but she didn't get to meet her. But others did, Buckley-Ball said.

"The coolest thing was, half of the Ford players came up to me and were like, ‘I’m not supposed to say this, but I got to meet Mary and that’s the greatest thing ever,’ " Buckley-Ball said. "That was really cool. She stayed for one whole period and hung out and talked to people. That brought a lot of people in.”

Grandpa's influence

Ford had the Schmitt twins, but GM has its own power player: Kalena Issacson.

Isaacson, 32, is the quality engineering lead at Factory Zero in Detroit and Hamtramck where GM assembles its GMC Hummer EVs and the Silverado EV work truck. She's the first to tell you that she's an "awkward" engineer who froze up when she met Barra at the game in 2019.

"Our goalie Maggie is in marketing and she is very sociable and I’m an engineer, so I am kind of awkward. So she’s there chatting it up with Mary and I was trying to say something, but I had nothing good to say to Mary, so I said, ‘Hi, I’m an engineer,' " Isaacson said. "It was kind of a fan girl moment. But it was really neat to get to meet her."

One place Isaacson isn't awkward is on the ice, she's been playing hockey for at least 20 years now, she said. Isaacson got into engineering and into hockey thanks to one man: her grandpa, who had worked at GM as a designer and had played hockey for fun.

“I remember growing up he’d tell me stories and he was the one who got me really interested in engineering and cars," Isaacson told the Free Press. "I loved hanging out with him. My parents used to work long hours, so my grandparents would help take care of me. So my grandma was best to keep me active and my grandpa would hang out with me and we’d watch hockey after work on the TV and it was the best.”

She started to play hockey at age 12 in the boys league at the local ice rink near Royal Oak where she grew up, she said. But soon Isaacson was forced to choose between playing soccer or hockey because her parents couldn't afford for her to do both. She chose hockey, the more expensive sport, she joked.

“But (my parents) were super supportive. My aunt and uncle helped me find equipment and stuff," Isaacson said. "I had a bunch of Play It Again gear because why not? I don’t need to buy brand new gear all the time. So they helped me scrounge pieces of gear as I grew up.”

Like Buckley-Ball, Isaacson also plays in the Michigan Senior Women’s Hockey league. Isaacson has played in every Women's Automotive Cup game since it started, even in 2022 just a mere nine months after giving birth to twins.

"I hadn’t skated except for one drop-in skate at the local rink to try to get my legs back underneath me after having the kids," Isaacson said. "But I thought that’s fine, we’ll see how it goes. I get out there on the ice for the first shift and almost immediately I skated on the ice and scored. I don’t know how I did that. I do manage to score quite a bit. I am a fast skater."

Buckley-Ball describes Isaacson as "the nicest, sweetest person even in the most tense games."

“She’s a center, she sees the ice so well," Buckley-Ball said. "Beautiful passes and just a positivity that she brings.”

But her grandfather never got to see any of it. He died when she was young. Her grandmother, however, has seen many of Isaacson's games and, “she’s always said, 'He’d be so proud to see you out there.’ I wish he could see me, I know he would love it.”

The 'Grudge Match'

Isaacson helped lead GM to victory in February 2020 and February 2022. In 2020, GM won the game, 4-2, and raised $7,912 out of the total $14,519 at that event. There was no game held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2022, the event resumed and GM won the game, 7-4, and raised $7,390 of the $13,108 total in charity funds that game.

That meant in 2023, Ford had won two games and GM had won two, so Buckley-Ball said they promoted the event as the "Grudge Match" to break the tie.

"We say Grudge Match, but none of us had any bad blood against each other," Buckley-Ball said. "But the game came and we were fired up. We ended up winning that game 10 to nothing. We were pretty dominate on the ice. It was just everybody was there to play and we were all gelling. So we won that year.”

The charities won too: GM and Ford raised a total of $25,346. On Feb. 17, GM raised $15,600 when the women's team split in half and played each other. But Buckley-Ball wants Ford back on the ice with them.

“I put my feelers back out there with my Ford players to see if they’re going to do it, but if they’re not, I’ll keep the GM game going," Buckley-Ball said. "I am hoping they come to the table because it’s more fun that way."

Ford's Kari Schmitt is game, "that would be awesome to continue it.”

GM vs. Ford: Men's charity hockey too now

Since then, Buckley-Ball has organized a GM versus Ford men’s hockey tournament that started last year to raise money to fight distracted driving called The Keifer Cup. It benefits the Keifer Foundation, a nonprofit started by former GM executive Steve Kiefer whose son was killed by a distracted driver. The Keifer Cup tournament this year is on May 4 and 5 at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth.

All of the charity hockey games balance a competitive spirit of good natured rivalry with fun for a good cause.

"I was worried it would get too competitive in the stands, because you never know. But we’ve had some great fan interactions. They get loud and cheer and bang on the boards and have a great time," Buckley-Ball said. "We joke around, I am good friends with a lot of Ford players and they’ll be like, 'Do you want to drop the gloves?’ and I say, 'No. This (motions to her face) does not want to get hit, ever.' ”

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: GM versus Ford women's hockey game raises thousands for charity