'Giving young girls the opportunity to dream': Canadian Olympian finds gold in street hockey
Heartbroken from Team Canada's loss to the U.S. at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, Laura Stacey found solace in a pickup game of street hockey. And then she found purpose.
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That pickup game sparked an annual road hockey tournament fundraiser that not incidentally celebrates the growing success of professional women's hockey.
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'I think giving young girls that opportunity to dream that opportunity, to see what they can become is pretty special,' said Stacey, the great-granddaughter of hockey Hall of Famer King Clancy. She joined the Montréal Victoire of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) in 2024. (She also brought home gold with Team Canada in Beijing.)
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On July 5, Stacey held her sixth annual road hockey tournament in Toronto, and raised over $60,000 for Canadian charities encouraging youth sport and fitness. Another event is scheduled to be held in Montreal on Aug. 23. She spoke to the National Post:
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A post shared by Laura Stacey (@laurastacey7)
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No rain at all. Blue skies. It was literally a perfect day. We had 20 teams, over 140 players playing. We had 22 pros and some special guests. Kate Beirness did our whole introduction, which was absolutely amazing.
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Basically, how it worked is once the kids in the community and all the players showed up, they threw their sticks in the middle and all the pros were given a team. We tossed the sticks around early in the morning, made the teams and all the different players got to play with different people.
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There was a little 10-year-old French girl who came up to me so nervous in the morning that she wanted to play with her friends and they were split up because their sticks were thrown different ways. And by the end of the day, she came up to me and her mom said, 'This was the most amazing thing.'
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By the end of the day, the little girl – who was so shy that she wasn't gonna be able to talk to anybody — was high-fiving and hugging and saying goodbye to her new teammates. So, pretty cool to hear. It was by far our biggest one yet. I have no idea how many people showed up, but it was packed until the very end. We ended up raising over $60,000. So it's been amazing to be honest with you.
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