Did Title IX change everything? We like to think so, but in reality, women continued to face discrimination on the playing fields. I thought about that as I read Kendall Coyne’s book, As Fast As Her.

            Kendall Coyne was born in 1992, twenty years after passage of the gender equality law. She’s well known today as an ice hockey player. But even as a young girl, she realized that her gender was going to be a problem.

            When she was seven years old, she signed up for a baseball team in Palos Heights, Illinois. When she showed up to the first practice, the coach frowned.

            “Who’s this?” he said. Kendall’s mother squared up. “This is Kendall. She’s here to play baseball.”  

            “Girls sign up for softball,” he continued. “This is baseball.”

             “She wants to play baseball and she will be just fine. Go ahead, Kendall. You go play,” her mother replied.*

            And Kendall did go play.

Cold shoulder on the ice

            Kendall went on to play ice hockey in high school and at Northeastern University. As a senior, she was named the top female college ice hockey player in the United States.

            But in this sport, Kendall faced even more pushback. In elementary and junior high, she played with the Chicago Chill, the highest level of youth hockey. During her third year on the team, she was invited to play on Team Powerade, the first all-girl hockey team to compete in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament, which is something like the Little League World Series is to youth baseball.

            The fans weren’t happy to see girls on the ice. While they played, they shouted (in French) that girls should be in the kitchen, not on the ice. Even worse, they threw hot pennies on the ice near their bench. The pennies melted into the ice and if the girls skated over them, they could trip and fall. Who would do that to children?!?

            Despite the opposition, Kendall excelled at the sport she loved. She played in the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, where the team won silver; at the 2018 Games, where they won gold; and in 2022, when the team took silver again. As a professional, she played for the Boston Pride and the Minnesota Whitecaps. She has also had a career in sports broadcasting.

Faceoff against the guys

            But Kendall really got the spotlight on one night in January 2019.

            Kendall was attending the NHL All-Star Skills Competition in San Jose. She and other female players were there to demonstrate each skill to the fans. But at the last minute, a male competitor in the fastest skater segment backed out due to an injury.

            An NHL official who knew Kendall got her on the roster of eight players. She went out onto the ice and turned in a time of 14.346, less than a second behind the winning time of 13.378.

            But more importantly, she proved to a huge audience that women could skate. “While I happened to be the one skating, it was a combination of all the efforts of all the women players over the years showcasing that, hey, this game is real,” she says.**

            The fame she enjoyed from that moment is both thrilling and disheartening.

            “So many times, women only get attention when they do something in a  man’s arena. It is unfortunate, but it is the reality we face,” said tennis great Billie Jean King.***

Is anybody there?

            Today, Kendall is a player development coach for the Chicago Blackhawks. She scouts NHL prospects, watches games and video and gives feedback to the players. She is president and co-founder with her husband Michael Schofield of the Schofield Family Foundation. They are part owners of the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). She is founder of the Kendall Coyne Hockey Camp.

            But even now, she sees discrimination. USA Hockey spends millions on development for boys, she says, but girls have no equivalent program. Women get no feedback on their play, and no one is out there recruiting women for the Olympics.

            “Something that I struggle with is that there’s not a head scout, a full-time head scout for the women’s national team,” she said. “Who’s watching college hockey? Who’s watching youth hockey? Who’s watching pro hockey?”****

            If Kendall gets her way, maybe someone will be watching soon.

                                                ________________

* Kendall Coyne, As Fast As Her: Dream Big, Break Barriers, Achieve Success (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2022), p. 16.

** Tracey Myers, “Five Questions With Kendall Coyne,” NHL.com (October 29, 2019).

*** As Fast As Her, p. vii.

**** Alex Azzi, “Kendall Coyne Schofield has first-hand look at what women’s hockey is missing,” NBC Sports (August 29, 2022)