Gender equality was never something I really thought of as a kid. When I was little, I took pride in being one of the boys and liked being the only girl on my team. I wore that as a badge of honor. However, I eventually understood that if I ever wanted to play on an Olympic team then I was going to need to get recruited to play women's college hockey, and those coaches were not going to be recruiting me from a boys' team out of Chandler, Arizona. So I started playing on an all-girls team in Colorado which helped get me the exposure I needed in order to play college hockey at Harvard University.
Through overcoming adversity, and thanks to discipline and extreme hard work, I was fortunate to earn a spot on Team USA for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. My teammates and I won the silver medal and I had the honor of changing a small part of history forever. I became the first ice hockey player, male or female, from the state of Arizona to compete in the Olympics and the first Olympian from Arizona to medal in the Winter Olympics. When I came home in 2015, I felt like a star. Everyone in the Arizona hockey community knew my name. That spotlight didn't dim until a young Arizona local man named Auston Matthews came into the picture and became the first pick in the 2016 NHL Draft, by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Just like that, I was no longer the famous hockey player in town.
Now, I'm not complaining. Auston has earned everything, but in the lens of gender equality, I think looking at my story compared to his is important. After my college career was over, the options in my eyes at the time were to play for a start-up pro women's league for two percent of what Auston's entry salary was, or to come home and try to grow the game in Arizona so that I wasn't the last female Olympian from our state. Playing for an unlivable wage didn't seem like an option for me, so I came home. Let me be very clear, I've never regretted it for one minute and I adore Auston for all that he has done to ignite hockey in our home state and across North America.
My point with all of this is that gender equality, or rather inequality, didn't mean much to me until I experienced it in this context. Auston and I grew up in the same state, with the same rinks and many of the same coaches. We both worked extremely hard, have amazing parents and had many opportunities along the way. The difference is simply reality: women's sports still have a long way to go.
I am a businesswoman. I understand the economics. I realize that we are a long way from women getting paid millions to play the sport we love. But the fact that there is now a conversation around equality in our sport is extremely exciting to me and makes me feel optimistic for the future. Having a platform to share my story and have a voice in that conversation makes me so proud, and that is ultimately what gender equality month means to me.
