MASSPORT JETS

The Massport Jets was a ground-breaking girls' ice hockey team founded in 1970 by Anthony Marmo, a figure well known in East Boston, Massachusetts for his advocacy of youth ice hockey programs. The team practiced at the Porrazzo Memorial Skating Rink and was partially supported by the Massachusetts Transportation Authority, which is where the team derived its name. As word of girls' ice hockey spread, over a dozen of new teams began to form in Massachusetts, and Marmo eventually went on to found the American Girls Hockey Association (AGHA).

Coached initially by Marmo and later by Robert E. Travaglini (who became majority whip of the Massachusetts Senate), the Massport Jets were the champions of the first Girls' Invitational Hockey Tournament, held at Cornell University in 1973. In 1975 they were enshrined in the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario. Although the Jets petitioned the International Olympic Committee to include women's hockey in the 1976 Games, it wasn't until 1998 that women's ice hockey made its Olympic debut.

During the first reunion of the Massport Jets in 1988, Marmo was inducted, as founder of the AGHA, into the New England Sports Museum. East Boston publicly recognized Marmo's achievements when a new pedestrian bridge, on Bennington Street in Orient Heights, was formally named the Tony Marmo Bridge in September 2001.