After a couple of years of community college, Rylan finished her bachelor of journalism in 2009–10 at Metro State in Denver, a Div. 2 school that didn’t have a women’s hockey team. She made due, becoming the first woman to play on the men’s team. After graduation, Rylan got into Northeastern University for a masters in sports leadership. With two years of NCAA eligibility left, she tracked down head coach David Flint, who’d tried to recruit her out of high school for a Div. 3 team he coached then. Rylan asked if she had a shot at making the D-1 Huskies as a walk-on, but Flint hadn’t seen her play in years, and the last time he had, he says she was a “bubble Division 1 player.” He said he’d give her a jersey. “That’s the only thing I can guarantee you, is an opportunity,” Flint told her.

Rachel Llanes was a 19-year-old sophomore on scholarship that 2010–11 season. “All we knew was there was this older walk-on,” she says of Rylan, the 23-year-old who came in amongst a rookie class of mostly 18-year-olds. So, yeah, Rylan’s potential teammates had questions. Biggest among them: “Can she keep up? You have this grandma coming along, and we weren’t sure,” Llanes says. “But she actually could, and there was really nothing on the ice she couldn’t handle. She was fast, and for her size, she played gritty.” (Rylan had separated her shoulder in a particularly gritty moment at Metro State the previous season: “I was actually trying to hit him,” she says of her opponent, “but he hit me harder.”)

Gritty “Grandma” (the nickname stuck) was in the Huskies lineup from Day 1, a third-liner who scored three goals her first season to go with seven assists. Flint describes Rylan as “an absolute workhorse” who played a major role in shutting down other teams’ top lines. “To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised at her game,” he says. “She also had a very important presence in the locker room.” Rylan was “the centre of everything in our room, all in good ways,” as Llanes describes it. “She had so much energy, one of the best personalities on the team. She was so positive. You could just tell she was so happy to be part of the team and to get to be at the rink every day.”