You tighten your ponytail and pull on your helmet. For a little girl joining her boys team on the ice in small town Northern Ontario, the empty dressing room serves as a proverbial echo-chamber of the concession stand commentary.

“Girls don’t play hockey”

“No one will watch”

Despite never seeing older girls play hockey you learn to persevere and block out the noise of your male opponents and their parents. You find more ponytailed teammates and you make it through the “pretty-girls-don’t-play-hockey” drop-off.

Years later, you’ll win a national championship and sign pro contracts. Google Home will be able to answer your dad’s prompt, “Hey Google, who is Sydney Kidd?”.

These will be the lesser parts of your hockey career.

The important parts will be so much harder than gold medals, rings or blue checkmarks. From a young age you’ll experience a microcosm of systemic societal challenges through a single sport.

You’ll learn about the gender pay gap while you’re paid less than your male colleagues at hockey camps, despite your impressive hockey resume. It will take years for you to feel comfortable to type the words impressive hockey resume as you recondition your brain to believe your accomplishments exist on the same level as your NHL-drafted brother.

You’ll recognize that far too many little girls playing the sport today look like you and not like Sarah Nurse or Bridgette Lacquette. That the rich palette of Canada’s diversity doesn’t match the canvas of its favourite game.

You’ll blame the media boys club for the all too many moments a little girl walks up to you asking for your autograph on a men’s hockey jersey. Frustrated society can’t seem to understand that restricting the visibility of female athletes limits progress far beyond the sport of hockey.

You’ll feel your own painful reflection reading articles depicting the abuse faced by young female athletes with male dominated coaching staffs. Learning from this brave sisterhood of athletes that there is still a lot of work to do to ensure sports are a safe space.