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The Olympic gold medalist scored in her
Minnesota team's 3-0 Game 5 victory over Boston last week to
hoist the Walter Cup in front of a sold-out crowd.
"For me, with this league, it was never about playing in it. It
was never about winning it. It was about building it," Coyne
Schofield told Reuters.
She was a founder of the Professional Women's Hockey Players
Association (PWHPA), a non-profit organization that brought in
some of the world's top players frustrated by inadequate pay and
resources elsewhere.
Years of fighting for her sport yielded results in July, when
Coyne Schofield helped negotiate a collective bargaining
agreement less than six months before the puck dropped in the
league's first game on Jan. 1.
"We were all drinking from a fire hose," said Coyne Schofield.
"With more of a runway going into year two and having a year
under our belt, it's only going to get better."
The year has also brought personal satisfaction, as the
six-times world champion gave birth to her son 11 months ago.
She worked out daily until the day before giving birth, staying
on the ice through 31 weeks of her pregnancy and scooping up a
free agency spot as a new mother. Remarkably, she played her
first PWHL game in January.
"I did go to Minnesota as a kind of a single mom because my
husband (NFL player Michael Schofield) was in Detroit... that's
kind of the hardest thing I've ever done," she said.
"I just realized how resilient moms are and, how honestly we're
capable of doing literally anything."
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, editing by Ed Osmond) [© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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