According to Minnesota Hockey, 86 percent of players under 8 years old are white. But the sport remains heavily white, even as Minnesota becomes more diverse. Minnesota, widely known as the State of Hockey, has the nation’s largest youth and high school hockey programming. Lah Paw holds the game puck after scoring her first hockey goal in a tie game on February 11. “What I like about hockey is being around people,” she said. She has improved a great deal in her first season on the ice, and said she was determined to score by the end of it.Īfter she got her goal, once her teammates finally let her skate back to the bench, she wore an enormous smile, according to Starwhals coach Clayton Howatt. But she really wanted that goal.įollowing a late January Starwhals game under the lights at Langford’s outdoor rink, she shrugged off her pads on a bench, unfazed by the cold in a Levi’s T-shirt. She’s becoming a faster, more confident skater, learning the fundamentals of the game, and making new friends. Her first season playing hockey is going well. Paw, 14, is a left-winger for the Starwhals, a youth girls team based at Langford Recreation Center in St. Her teammates erupted, mobbing Paw and cheering so hard that they nearly forgot to do the traditional “fly-by,” where the players who score skate past the bench to receive high-fives. The first-year hockey player crashed the net hard after a rebound, fought through two defenders, and buried the puck past the goalie on February 11 to put her team, the Starwhals, up 3-1 over their opponents in Hudson, Wisconsin.

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