who led the 2019 national champion Badgers in assists.
Now the 5' 7" center is poised to make history as the
first Indigenous member of the U.S. women’s team at the
Olympics, where she plans to use her platform to encour-
age other nonwhite players to follow in her skate marks.
“Reading articles, talking to other players, realizing
the numbers of what others have faced through the game
with getting racial slurs yelled at them, it becomes a lot
more clear just how hard it is for minority players to be
accepted,” Roque says. “I’m lucky to have gotten all the
way here, so I need to continue to push hockey to become
more diverse. I should be doing what I can to make it
visible to people, so they know you can make it this far.”
Roque, 24, is far from the only emerging star on the
roster of the defending gold medalists, who ended a
20-year Olympic title drought in 2018 with a shootout win
over rival Canada. Helping to replace retired veterans such
as Kacey Bellamy, Meghan Duggan, and twins Jocelyne
and Monique Lamoureux are a couple of 19-year-olds:
puck-moving blueliner Caroline Harvey and pot-stirring
forward Abbey Murphy, a proud, self-described “little
s---” on the ice.
The U.S. opens with a tough test—against world No. 3
Finland—and will again need to hold off the Canadians,
the reigning world champions, led by longtime cap-
tain Marie-Philip Poulin. Whether its back-to-back bid
succeeds will likely depend on how the new guard handles
the pressure. And out of this unproven group, no one
shoulders bigger expectations than Roque (pronounced
rock), especially after teammate and four-time Olympian
Hilary Knight told reporters last year, “I think she’s going
to be the best player in the world. Plain and simple.”
Wielding the longest and stiffest stick of any U.S.
player, a 95-f lex Bauer she’s favored since childhood,
Roque wears down opponents with a sandpaper style she
attributes to her four years of legal hitting in boys high
school hockey. “Doesn’t matter if you’re smaller,” she
says. “You still have to battle. You still have to come outwith the puck.” Yet she ranks among the most creative
American playmakers, turning both heads and ankles
with an array of dangles and spin-o-ramas refined as a kid
on her backyard rink and at nearby Lake Superior State,
here Jim, now a Maple Leafs scout, coached the Division I
men. “When he was busy in meetings and I knew that
the ice was open, I would go and try things that I saw
[the college players do],” Abby says. “I just wanted to be
there and learn more than anything.”
This combination of grind and gumption has already
won her fans in the Team USA locker room. “That’s
why she’s so respected,” says coach Joel Johnson, who
first guided Roque on the U-18 team, fondly recalling a
more recent time when she cruised by his old perch as a
Minnesota assistant to chirp at him about face-off results72ER
ICK(^) W.
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SC
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Says Roque of being an Indigenous
hockey player: “I’m lucky
to have gotten here, so I need
to continue to push
HOCKEY TO BECOME MORE DIVERSE.”