Six years ago today, my youngest daughter attended a Try Hockey Free event at a local ice rink. Never mind she had never ice skated. She had in her mind that she wanted to play ice hockey.

She had been talking about ice hockey non-stop and I thought the free event might power that down given that spending time holding onto the wall and having an icy, wet tush is no one’s idea of a good time.

My husband took her to the rink that day. Come look at the pic he texted me from the event…

Yep. That’s my freakishly gifted athletic daughter. She LOVED it. With little to no encouragement from us, she went on to teach herself to ice skate. We eventually realized this wasn’t going away even though she was a natural as a soccer goalkeeper and worked her way up to the premier team in her club.

Two years ago, she took the ice in a co-ed club hockey league and impressed me every practice with her tenacity.

Tonight, I’m at her high school team’s varsity tryouts. She played all last year as one of two girls on the team. This year she’s the only girl.

She is fierce and I am in awe of the young woman she is becoming. I’m one proud hockey mom.