Hockey is For Everyone Month Feature Story

The dream of being a professional athlete is not uncommon among children. However, the sport of ice hockey has not always had a clear path for women. Jamie Goldsmith grew up in the Philadelphia area watching the Philadelphia Flyers and the Legion of Doom, marveling at the skill, grace, and power of the Flyers trio. She shared these moments with her mother, the biggest fan in the family and unknowingly, her first ambassador of the game serving as proof that hockey fandom is for everyone.

A love affair with the game deepened quickly, but being an avid fan was not fulfilling enough for Goldsmith. She wanted to take to the ice and pretend to be the next Lindros or LeClair. Hockey was enjoyable to watch, but now she was getting a taste of just how much fun the sport was to play with kids her own age. Alongside her almost exclusively male teammates, Goldsmith competed shift after shift and looked forward to each time out on the ice. Hockey was an enjoyable activity, her favorite game to play by far, but one of many passions. That was until she got chance to lace up her skates on her first all-female team. She was hooked and could dedicate her thoughts to nothing else. The dream was beginning to come into focus.

“I always loved hockey, but there was something about getting in the room, with girls just like me,” Goldsmith told me, when we sat down recently to talk about her relationship with the game. “There was something really empowering about being in a locker with all girls that loved the game as much as I did.”

In 1998, as the US Women’s Olympic team was on the way to the first-ever gold medal in the sport of women’s ice hockey, Goldsmith’s dream of becoming a professional hockey player took on a new life. A glass ceiling was broken in front of her eyes. Women’s hockey existed not just at her rink, not just in her state, but on the grand stage of the Olympics. Goldsmith began a journey that took her away from home at the age of 13 to play for the National Sports Academy, before continuing on to St. Lawrence University.

While there was no Olympic roster invite for Goldsmith upon graduating from St. Lawrence and too much uncertainty with the Canadian Women’s Hockey League still in infancy, a new opportunity did present itself—this time, behind the bench. She transitioned from player to coach, determined to help support the growth of women’s hockey to help build and illuminate the path for future female hockey players. In 2017, while coaching at The Gunnery prep school in Connecticut, Goldsmith received a call from Coach Ryan Equale asking if she would come play for the Connecticut Whale in the NWHL. “At first, I thought I would turn it down,” Goldsmith said, “But the more I thought about it, and thinking about my 10-year-old self-having that opportunity in front of me, there was no way that I could turn it down.”

In her two seasons with the Whale, Goldsmith dressed in 30 games, recording four goals and three assists. A dream had been realized. She had become a professional hockey player. Yet, as we talked about her professional career, she did not speak with any sort of true fulfillment. There was work still to be done.

Jamie Goldsmith was one of over 200 professional women hockey players to join the #ForTheGame movement, committing to “not play in any professional leagues in North America this season until we get the resources that professional hockey demands and deserves.”

In an attempt to secure a more solid foundation for the professional women’s game, Jamie and her NWHL teammates have pledged to sacrifice the prime of their professional playing careers. Goldsmith’s tenure in the NWHL had motivated her to focus on the next generation of women’s hockey players. On the next generation of powerful women.