From Small-Town Ontario Wearing Pink Gloves to Playing Pro Hockey

Neve Van Pelt played for the NCAA Providence Friars women’s hockey team from 2016-17 to 2019-20 and for the NWHL (now PHF)’s Buffalo Beauts in 2020-21. She’s currently a student at the College of Sports Media in Toronto and an intern at The Hockey News. She’s writing a blog series about her hockey journey.

The first time I held a hockey stick in my hands, I fell in love immediately. Little did I know that about 17 years later, my love for the game would lead me to play professionally in the NWHL, now called the PHF.

Let’s start from the beginning.

As a small-town girl from Mitchell, Ont., hockey didn’t even cross my mind at a young age. All of my friends were playing ringette, so it was a no-brainer for me to play that sport, too.

It started out great, learning how to skate and the rules of the game. However, once I had this figured out, it got to a point where I was skating circles around others. 

There’s one game in particular that I’ll never forget. After scoring five or six goals in the first period, my coach pulled me aside and literally told me I wasn’t allowed to score again.

As you can imagine, little Neve wasn’t very happy about this. Holding back tears until the game was over, I proceeded to bawl into my parents’ arms in the dressing room. To my luck, the novice (now called U-9 in Canada) girls hockey coach, a friend of my dad’s, happened to walk by and notice how upset I was and asked if I’d like to come out for hockey practice.

This moment changed my life forever. I said goodbye to ringette and hello to my future.

A hockey stick is quite different from a ringette stick – it was pretty much adding a whole blade onto the straight stick I was used to. 

Needless to say, I was far from the best player on the ice in my first practice. Being the competitive person I am, this excited me.

I was a strong skater, so it was the stickhandling and shooting that I had to get used to. Luckily for me, I have a younger brother who loved hockey almost as much as I did, so we would spend hours in the driveway playing 1-on-1 and fine-tuning our skills. By the next season, I was not only leading my team but dominating the entire league.

At this time, there were no websites that kept track of youth hockey stats, but my parents knew I had a special talent and wanted to have something to remember all of my hard work by. Every week, they would cut out my name and how many goals I scored in the local newspaper, the Mitchell Advocate. By the end of the season, they had a collection of cut-outs adding up to more than 100 goals, and of course, each one I scored was in my favorite pink hockey gloves that I still have to this day.

As much of a “girly-girl” I was off the ice, when it came to the second I hit the ice for a hockey game, all I cared about was winning.

The novice boys coach ended up asking me to play for my team and the boys team because of their short bench. It was an easy “yes” because my brother was on the team, and my parents were already going to the games. 

When I went out there and was dominating on the boys team as well, this is when we realized that if this was something I wanted to pursue, it was probably time to leave my small town.

Besides making the jump to NCAA Div. I and then the professional level, one of the biggest steps of my career came next.

Going from novice C in Mitchell to a tryout for the Huron-Perth Lakers AAA boys team was eye-opening. Suddenly, I wasn’t the best player on the ice anymore – far from it, to be honest. But oddly enough, this didn’t scare me. 

The one thing I could rely on was my work ethic, and no one could beat me in this department. The coach noticed this, and despite the assistant coaches thinking I didn’t quite have the skill level that some of the other boys did, he took a chance on me.

This was different from my small town. I didn’t go on to become the best player on the team, but this opportunity did give me the chance to take my game to the next level. With practices twice a week and at least two games on the weekends, it was impossible not to improve. 

The challenge of going up against players that were better than me shaped me into a great defensive center. At the time, there was also still body contact in atom (U-11) hockey, so it taught me how to be a heads-up player and elevated my strong playmaking ability.

That year of AAA boys hockey was a key part of my development. Although I probably could’ve cracked the lineup again the following year, I made the decision to go back to girls hockey.

I spent six years with the Saugeen Maitland Lightning organization, and they were six years I will never forget. From the friendships I made to the championships we won to being offered a full scholarship to Providence College in my last season, the memories I made during this time are endless.

My final year before heading to Rhode Island was as great of a storybook ending as I could have ever dreamed of. Playing for the Toronto Junior Aeros of the Provincial Women's Hockey League, not only did we finish league and provincial champions, but I also finished among the league's top 10 scorers with 18 goals and 36 points. 

To put a cherry on top of this victorious senior year, my high-school hockey team won OFSAA – the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations – in front of our home crowd. I will forever be grateful for all of the core memories, friendships and life lessons that youth hockey gave me.

Moving to a new country to play the sport I love at the NCAA Div. I level was scary but exciting at the same time. As nervous as I was, every bone in my body was ready for this new journey at Providence College.

Stepping on the ice at Schneider Arena for the first time felt like I was a little kid waking up on Christmas morning. Knowing that I would spend the next four years of my life in this place put a permanent smile on my face.

But when they say your time at college is going to blow by, they aren’t lying. Taking one final lap around the ice, hand-in-hand with two of my best friends, after our last game in the Friars jersey was a feeling I can’t even put into words.

Those four years were some of the best, toughest and most memorable years of my entire life, and I couldn’t be more thankful to have had the opportunity to be a part of the Friars family.

My original plan following my time at Providence was to play overseas in Europe, but thanks to COVID-19, that dream was not going to become a reality. I wasn’t ready to stop playing hockey, and I wanted to stay close to home, but my next step was one I didn’t see coming.

A few phone calls with the Buffalo Beauts GM, Nate Oliver, and just like that, I was signing a contract to be a professional hockey player in the NWHL.