Ryan S. ClarkFeb 4, 2026, 07:40 AM ETCloseRyan S. Clark is an NHL reporter for ESPN.Follow on XMultiple Authors
Laila Edwards motivated to be role model (0:50)Laila Edwards joins “SportsCenter” and reflects on being set to be the first Black woman to play on the women’s hockey team in the Winter Olympics. (0:50)
Edwards, a 6-foot-1 senior forward for Wisconsin, has two national championships with the Badgers and has helped Team USA win two world championship medals. At age 22, she is a rising star who already is on track to become one of the faces of hockey in the United States. Edwards is making a notable move to playing defense for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, where the U.S. will face Czechia in an opening-round game Thursday at the Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena (10:40 a.m. ET).
“I’m extremely, extremely grateful and I can’t even put it into words,” Edwards says. “But there have been plenty of times, especially at the beginning, where I felt overwhelmed. I’m like, ‘What do I do with this? I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. It’s a positive, but how do I turn this into something that’s consistently positive?'”
Edwards and her family understand how much visibility matters. They know that a young Black girl or a child of color might see her on TV during the Olympics — playing in games, appearing in commercials, being interviewed in a studio — and suddenly view hockey in a new way or envision stepping into a world where they haven’t observed many people like themselves.
The Edwardses also recognize the impact it could have on viewers who haven’t seen many, or any, Black people or people of color playing ice hockey.
This happened in early November when the Rivalry Series between Canada and the U.S. came to Cleveland, and children of different ages and ethnic backgrounds clamored around Edwards.
“I have chosen and will continue to choose to embrace it because it is a beautiful thing and it’s a great thing,” Edwards says. “But just to have that ability to be a role model and hear that people are looking up to me — this may sound dramatic, but I think there’s even kids who have told me they are counting on me. I take that with a lot of pride and gratitude. I’ve met parents who have told me that their kids started playing because of me or that their kid still plays because of me.
“I’ve had kids say, ‘You’re my favorite player. You look like me.’ I think that’s so important to have someone at a high stage who looks like you, and it’s even more important that I can succeed at this high stage.”
He played baseball, football and basketball as a youth, and went on to play Division I baseball at Cleveland State University. He didn’t start playing hockey until he was 12, which put him behind his peers.
“It just was because Cleveland Heights was a progressive community. But not all of it was progressive. … It wasn’t like my parents didn’t care. They just weren’t able to advocate.”
“When my kids started, the two things I took from my own experience that helped me was No. 1, if they are going to play hockey, they are going to learn to skate first,” he says. “And No. 2 was that I was always going to advocate for them.”
The Cleveland Heights Community Center became a powerful bridge for the Edwards family, giving the children a chance to explore the sport in a familiar setting. Bobby, the oldest of the three siblings, played basketball before switching to hockey. Laila joined her older sister, Chayla, on the ice for figure skating. They’d change out of their leotards and tutus and go to a different part of the community center, where they would put on pads and jerseys to play hockey against the boys.
“Robert started taking the kids to ‘Learn How to Skate’ and free skates,” Gray-Edwards says. “He was taking them all the time. I liked that it was keeping them busy and not stuck indoors.
“… We were eventually like, ‘You need to choose between hockey and figure skating.’ I was leaning toward hockey. Figure skating was boring. I thought, ‘If I’m going to be cold, let me be excited and cold.'”
“As kids we played a lot of mini-sticks,” Chayla says. “She was super into that. She’d go outside and we’d have this little pad set up. She’d always be stickhandling, shooting out there.”
“We taped our sticks the same as Ovechkin,” Bobby says. “We would try to mimic a lot of his stuff in a game. I couldn’t do that, but Laila was able to do it. She would go through her legs. And then there was the time we went to a clinic.”
“‘She can shoot on this kid. Trust me,'” he recalls telling them. “The move she did on this kid who was probably five years older than her? Boom. Boom. Boom. It’s in the net.”
“You would think she wasn’t really doing anything,” Gray-Edwards says. “Then, all of a sudden, [the puck is] on her stick and something is happening. If you look away or you start talking, you’ll miss what she’s doing. It was amazing how she would just be standing on the boards and … then — boom, boom, boom — and it was all over.”
PLAYING HOCKEY AT the Cleveland Heights Community Center gave Edwards and her family the chance to make new friends like Seanna Conway, a girls’ youth hockey coach. They also realized how different their life was compared with some of the families they encountered.
The Edwardses knew what it meant to be a Black family. To be a Black hockey family meant entering spaces that were different from their previous experiences. Laila learned early that if she was going to play hockey, she probably wasn’t going to see many other players like her.
“He comforted me and was just there for me. It meant a lot. I always remember that. But it took a little bit getting used to. I was like, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I was born this way.'”
She and her family also traveled to tournaments far beyond the comforts of the Cleveland Heights Community Center. This meant even more time in spaces where there were few, if any, people who shared their experience.
“Now we’re missing Easter dinner because we’re in Brampton, Canada,” Gray-Edwards says. “I’m now eating Popeye’s instead. I’m asking, ‘Where’s the ham? Where’s the greens? Where’s the macaroni and cheese? What are we doing?’ That’s when life slowly starts to change for all of us.”
There were trade-offs. The family stayed at hotels with pools so the children could play. Those tournament trips replaced family vacations.
Chayla and Laila were good enough to play for teams that traveled to Europe. That meant figuring out the money so both girls could be seen by colleges and prep schools.
“Oh, you have to get passports. Oh, it’s a couple thousand dollars to fly over there,” Gray-Edwards says. “Oh, you still need money to eat while you’re over there. Oh. So, we’re not in Cleveland Heights anymore? We have graduated outside that. OK. Now they want to go to boarding school.
“When I grew up, boarding school was for bad kids. I was like, ‘Why do you want to go to boarding school?'”
Bishop Kearney High School, a private school in Rochester, New York, is a four-hour drive from Cleveland. Its girls’ hockey club program was a year old when Kearney, among other schools, recruited Edwards. Kearney had a fighting chance in recruiting Edwards because Kathy Pippy was one of its founders.
Pippy is the head of scouting and senior advisor to the general manager for the Vancouver Goldeneyes in the PWHL. She is one of the most influential figures in girls’ and women’s hockey. Pippy started the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite Girls program that won a pair of USA Hockey national championships. She also has created and organized summer showcases for girls.
“Kathy is still one of Laila’s biggest supporters on and off the ice,” says Cari Coen, the girls’ hockey director at Bishop Kearney. “Kathy Pippy bringing her here was huge.”
Pippy said she wanted to recruit talented players to Kearney. She also wanted to recruit players who didn’t come from traditional programs because they “already had what they needed” while finding prospective players who also valued having a good education.
“I do think [the Edwards family] trusted me and I do take pride in that,” Pippy says. “I think with all the players now, I mainly get to know them and their families when they are nine, 10 and when they get to the time of getting to high school, I’ve already had a relationship established and they will reach out to me. If BK is right for them, I can help open those doors.”
Edwards was part of a recruiting group in Kearney’s first classes that included her future Wisconsin teammate Caroline Harvey. Those classes laid the foundation for Kearney to become one of the best schools for girls’ hockey. Kearney has five alumni representing Team USA at the Olympics. Altogether, it has eight former players and one former coach who will be in Milan Cortina.
“It’s like you go from that and then you leave to go to the rink and boom, nobody looks like you,” Edwards says. “It’s as soon as you get on the bus for practice.”
Paul Colontino, president of Bishop Kearney, coached Edwards for two seasons. He described her as kind and mature and said she gained respect from the coaching staff and her teammates.
“My fear came from things like, ‘Oh, she’s wearing none of the right trendy styles’ or something because I would just wear my older brother’s hand-me-downs and things like that,” Edwards says. “That’s what I was kind of scared of. But I never received judgment.”
THERE’S A WALL in the Bishop Kearney girls’ hockey dormitory where they measure players’ height. Coen laughed recalling all of Edwards’ markings.
Skating is hard enough, but taller players must concentrate on their mechanics or risk issues such as chronic back pain. Edwards, whose father is 6-2, stood 6 feet as a high school senior. That would have tied her with Logan Angers and Lee Stecklein, the second-tallest players currently in the PWHL, according to Elite Prospects. She has grown an inch since then, making her as tall as Abbey Levy, the tallest player in the PWHL.
“Her coming out on a penalty kill as a forward to block a shot and it would scare them just by her height,” Coen says. “She’s almost an extra body of what most average 15- or 16-year-old girls are, right?”