Each night the New York Rangers played, I could be found sitting in the basement between my brother and my dad, eyes fixed on the television screen. Each commercial break allotted for two minutes of mini sticks, and intermissions were reserved for a bubble hockey tournament. Those three hours every game day were almost ritualistic — everything was about hockey.
Obsessed with the sport, I spent my free time shooting at the garage door or playing 1 v. 1 against my older brother in the street. With each scrape of the wooden sticks against asphalt or an unpredictable ricochet of the ball, I craved what I envisioned to be the smooth feeling of my blades gliding across the ice. However, my mom was adamant that ice hockey — complete with contact and high risk of injury, played against boys rapidly outgrowing me — was not an option.
Growing up, I tried a plethora of sports, but never felt a particular attachment to any of them. In middle school, my parents had the brilliant idea to try to get the knack for hockey out of my system by signing me up for field hockey — close enough, right? Field hockey was just too choppy: running hunched over, gripping the short stick, fighting to dribble the ball in tall grass. Again, I hankered to play on ice so I could soar.
With freshman year looming, I was pressured to choose between soccer, cross country or field hockey to be my fall sport. That same summer I had my 14th birthday and my mom asked what I wanted. All I begged for was a few hockey lessons just to see if my zeal was legitimate. After ample convincing, my parents begrudgingly agreed to sign me up for a single lesson. I was dressed in my brother and neighbor’s hand-me-down gear complete with rental skates and a stick six inches too tall for me, but I was dressed like a hockey player. Even before touching the ice, I was beaming as my mom began to realize the can of worms she opened. Like a toddler learning to walk, I skated off-balance and stumbled over my own feet. However, in the reflection of the glass panes lining the rink, I caught a glimpse of myself wearing my mismatched gear and felt overwhelmed with pride.
There was no denying that my love for hockey was all-encompassing. Every minute of daylight after school was burned practicing in the driveway, evident from the hundreds of dents in my parent’s garage door. When the sun was down, I was engrossed in watching the NHL network. Not without hesitation, my parents succumbed to my relentless request. I wouldn’t have to go through the motions of soccer or cross country or field hockey — I could try ice hockey. There was just one stipulation that set off alarm bells in my head: despite enrolling in a co-ed league, I was the sole girl.
Countering my excitement to play, my first season playing hockey uncovered glaring disparities between myself and my teammates. The vast disconnect left me othered. It was apparent with each instance that the coaches referred to the team as ‘boys’ or ‘guys’ and then awkwardly tag on ‘and girl’ when we locked eyes. Although my ardor was soured by the unequal treatment and lack of sisterhood, nothing would prevent me from playing the sport I loved.
The women’s locker room at my home rink was really a gear closet with a bench, although the 4-by-8 foot room had a strange way of feeling large when no one was there to accompany me. Through the wall separating us, I could hear my teammates chatting and laughing ahead of our games. Each game day, one of the several male coaches would break my silence when the Zamboni was wrapping up to summon me for the game plan. Walking into the boys’ locker room, fully dressed with my water bottle in hand, I felt twenty pairs of eyes on me. I would drop my head and grab a seat by the door, before peeking at our head coach for instruction. I could feel the stares return when my name was announced starting at center.
Anything my teammates could do, I could too — win faceoffs, score goals, even lay hits. But despite my ability on the ice, I could never be one of them, a fact underscored by my solo walk in the other direction after the final whistle sounded. To add insult to injury, some of the teenage boys I played with truly disgusted me. Hearing how they spoke about women in my presence was disturbing, but having close friends on the team share what was said about me in my absence was especially jarring. To one older teammate, I wasn’t viewed as a hockey player, but rather his prey for inappropriate sexual advances.
Then, the 2018 Winter Olympics commenced, proving to be a pivotal moment: my first time watching women’s hockey. I was an avid viewer starting from the preliminaries all the way to the gold medal game. Set in Pyeongchang, the final game began just past midnight eastern time. It was tied through all 60 minutes of regulation. Even the 20-minute overtime period wasn’t enough to break the stalemate. Now, past 3 a.m. on a school night in the sixth round of the shootout, Jocelyne Lamoureux dekes and scores to end it — an image that would soon be memorialized in a poster above my bed.
I witnessed history as team USA took down team Canada to bring home gold for the first time in two decades. Although miserably tired at school, I was thrilled to wear my Kendall Coyne jersey — custom-made, of course, as women’s jerseys were not being produced for retail in 2018. No one in my high school freshman classes knew — or cared — that team USA had just won gold in hockey simply because it was women’s.
Toward the end of 2019, I begged my dad to drive us to Hartford to see USA and Canada face off in the flesh in the Rivalry Series. With my Coyne jersey on, we made the three hour trip north. Knowing what this meant to his teenage daughter, he surprised me with seats on the glass directly behind the net. Minutes into the game, Alex Cavallini deflected a puck out of bounds and into my hands. To this day, that puck still sits on display in my childhood bedroom.
After the game, a few USA players were hanging around the rink and I got to show Kendall Coyne my jersey — or her jersey. The surprise and joy on my idol’s face when I showed the back of my jersey made the additional fee to customize it well worth it. She and my other favorite players — Hilary Knight, Megan Keller and Amanda Kessel — signed that jersey. Coyne even scribed a message to me on my ‘Go USA’ poster: “To Mikaela, dream big!”
The heartfelt gesture brought upon a wave of dejection. Hanging on my bedroom wall, the message taunted me. The dream of pursuing professional hockey never seemed attainable in my girlhood and suddenly my ripe age of 15 felt ancient. So what was there left to dream for?
Watching Knight and Keller joke around reminded me how I desperately wanted to experience the camaraderie that accompanies team sports. Briefly, I saw that opportunity when a teammate’s dad invited me to try out for a girl’s team. The excitement for building bonds with teammates subsided due to the inaccessibility of programs intended for women. After three days of tryouts, I made the team. Unfortunately, living in rural New Jersey, the nearest rink with a girl’s team was 45 minutes away, not to mention away games hosted by other teams in the league were up to three hours from home. Sadder still, I was still more than a year away from getting my drivers license. Each of the several 90-minute round trips for practice plus weekend games as far as Long Island every week did not appeal to my parents.
To appease them, I stayed put on my original team, still surrounded by boys. Hockey was created for them and I remained the outcast.
Regardless of the slew of systemic issues that made me want to quit my favorite sport, women’s hockey is becoming more accessible. Instead of waiting four years for the next Winter Olympics, I can just flip on the TV to a Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game. While Detroit does not yet have a team of its own, Little Caesars Arena hosted a matchup between Ottawa and Boston in March 2024. When the game was sealed by Hilary Knight’s shootout goal, I looked down at her signature proudly displayed on the front of my jersey.
Seeing thousands of young girls pack the arena, sitting with their teammates and repping their team’s jersey filled me with an overwhelming sense of happiness. But, knowing that these girls have other girls to bond with over their love for playing and watching hockey admittedly was bittersweet since I never experienced that. While my time playing sports has come to an end without the camaraderie I yearned for, I am hopeful that my daughter will experience it.
Spearheaded by the PWHL, the world of women’s hockey is flourishing. Girls can aspire to become professionals in a sport created for and dominated by men. With each jersey sale and arena packed, the barriers to enter a contact sport are coming down for girls. Now, young girls can look up to role models with braids spilling out of their helmets and own their favorite player’s jersey without customizing a men’s one.
Statement Columnist Mikaela Lewis can be reached at mikaelal@umich.edu.
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