On A Mission To Redefine The Term ‘Hockey Mom’
“I never wanted my son to think he was the reason I would stop playing,” Kendall Coyne tells WH.By Erica Zazo Updated: May 10, 2024 9:31 AM EDT
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Mark Blinch
Two-time gold medal Olympian and Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) player, Kendall Coyne, isn’t your average hockey mom.
The Team Minnesota captain spends her hours on the ice—not in the stands. At puck drop, she trades sippy cups for slap shots and swaps nap time for lap time. Kendall makes sure to put her all into her hockey game—and then she turns around and pours that same energy into parenting.
“So often when people think of a hockey mom, they think of the mom coming into the rink to watch her kids play,” Kendall tells Women’s Health while preparing for her last regular home game of the season. “I look at being a hockey mom as redefining what a hockey mom may be. And for me, that’s playing hockey with my child cheering me on.”
Kendall, whose son, Drew, is now 10 months old, played through her first trimester with the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) and Team USA, and continued practice skates until she was 31 weeks pregnant. She was doing workouts up until two days before she welcomed baby Drew with husband Michael Schofield, a professional football player, in July 2023. At six weeks postpartum, Kendall was cleared to get back to intense workouts. She was drafted to the PWHL in September, and took to the ice for her first game with Team Minnesota on January 3.
“It’s just been so unbelievable to be able to go through this journey with my son by my side,” she says. “It’s been so hard to get back to this point. By no means has it been easy, [but] he gives me so much strength and so much motivation.”
As the only mom on her team, Kendall says she hopes she inspires other teammates to know they can be a mom and still play hockey. She wants women to know that you don’t have to make a choice between the two.
“I never wanted [my son] to think he was the reason I would stop playing hockey,” she says. “He’s the reason that I continue to play hockey and go through this journey with him, whether he remembers it or not.”
Kelly Hagenson
Kendall takes the ice as captain of PWHL Minnesota.
