“What I didn’t know then that I do know now, is that I was getting myself onto the best rollercoaster that life had to offer.” Neve Van Pelt finishes her first-person series on how hockey became way more than just a game for Mitchell, Ont., native.
Neve Van PeltNeve Van Pelt played for the NCAA Providence Friars women’s hockey team from 2016-17 to 2019-20 and for the NWHL's (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. This is the final installment of her blog series about her hockey journey.
If you had told me when my dad gave me my first pink wooden hockey stick that this sport was going to become my life for the next two decades, I would have called you crazy.
Two decades later… I wouldn’t change it for the world.
They call it the “good ol’ hockey game” for a reason. Hockey not only gave me some of the best memories I’ll ever have, but it also shaped me into the person I am today.
I fell in love with the game the moment I scored my first goal in that black-and-yellow Mitchell (Ont.) Meteors jersey. What I didn’t know then, that I do know now, is that I was getting myself onto the best rollercoaster life had to offer.
When it comes to life, it doesn’t always go the way you want it to, and hockey taught me this lesson very quickly. I despised losing so much that if I received a medal that wasn’t gold, it would find itself in a trash can after the game. The moral of the story is that as tough as losing was, it taught me the importance of being adaptable and always taking the opportunity to grow from defeat rather than dwell on it.
Much like losing, making mistakes wasn’t very fun, either. Hockey’s not an easy sport to play, so messing up is bound to happen. Whether it was falling down hundreds of times while learning to skate, accidentally saucing the puck up the middle of the ice to the other team, or bringing two left shoes to a road game (yes, I actually did this by accident in my senior year), playing hockey all of those years taught me that sometimes, you just need to laugh it off and learn from it.
Wayne Gretzky famously said, “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take,” and this couldn’t be more true in hockey and in life. It’s honestly crazy to look back now and realize how many life skills I carry with me today that I developed from playing hockey.
Even though my days playing competitively are over, hockey will always have a special spot in my heart, and I will forever be grateful for everything the game gave me.
When I was younger, people would often come up to my parents at the rink and ask them if I ever stop smiling. The truth was that it was almost impossible to find me without a grin on my face. I was already a very outgoing and bubbly person to begin with, but when I walked inside a rink, that was my happy place. There wasn’t anything anyone could do to take that away from me.
It was a blessing to find something I loved so much at a young age, and I couldn’t be more thankful for my family’s support along the way. Pursuing hockey isn’t an easy thing to do. When you’re playing competitively, you sign up for countless hours of practices, games, road trips and weekends away. Luckily for me, my parents loved it just as much as I did.
Neve Van Pelt and her fatherSome of my fondest memories are when my dad coached me, and we’d drive to practice listening to all his old rock tunes and always stopping for a treat on the way home. To go from this to one day sharing moments like receiving a full-ride scholarship to play NCAA Div. I hockey and signing a contract to play professionally in the NWHL with people who were your No. 1 fans from Day 1 is incomparable. Without my dad, mom and brother, I wouldn’t be the person I am today or have had the hockey career I did. I’m eternally grateful for everything they did for me.
It’s been wonderful to watch women’s hockey continue to grow and inch closer and closer to where it deserves to be. When I was little girl, growing up to become a professional hockey player meant playing in the NHL, which clearly wasn’t a realistic option for me. To see a unified professional women’s league where players will be paid salaries between $35,000 to $85,000 beginning in January is beyond exciting, and it makes me extremely happy to know that future generations of young girls will be able to set achievable goals to become professional hockey players.
Even though my professional career was short-lived, it was a milestone I’m proud to say I accomplished. Signing a pro contract and earning an NCAA Div. I scholarship were probably my greatest achievements when it came to my hockey career, but when it comes to my most cherished memories, it would truly be impossible to fit them all into one blog. From almost getting kicked out of hotels for rowdy mini-stick games, to winning championships with my best friends, to long bus trips with teammates who became more like sisters, to the “hockey hugs” when your team scores, to singing win songs at the top of our lungs, to pre- and post-game dance parties, it’s the little things like these that make me miss it the most.
There’s no way to truly and fully prepare for the end of your hockey career. Coming to the end of an era is not an easy thing to do, but to look back at all of the opportunities, friendships, and memories this sport gave me is bittersweet. So to the good ol’ hockey game, thank you.