Growing up in Edmonton, para ice hockey wasn’t always on Alanna Mah’s radar — but hockey certainly was.
“I basically grew up in a hockey family,” Mah recalled. “My cousins played hockey, my grandparents — every Saturday night was Hockey Night in Canada in the household. My family and myself are really big Oilers fans, so I always knew I liked hockey, but I never knew that I could actually play it myself.”
Her first taste of parasport came at six years old through the Paralympic Sports Association, where she started with soccer. It was her soccer teammates who first opened the door to sledge hockey. “I think I was seven when I first tried it,” Mah said.
“My mom didn’t let me join at that time because the practices were too late at night — past my bedtime. I had to wait a couple years, and then I think I was nine years old when I fully joined. I’ve been playing ever since.”
Like many women in the sport, Mah’s early years came with unique challenges — both in skill development and in representation.
“I was the only girl when I started on my little junior team,” she said. “I was already out of my comfort zone, and then I was like, oh my gosh, I am the only girl here.”
That changed when another female teammate joined.
“We kind of came up through it together,” Mah said.
By 14, she had earned a spot on the national team. Just a year later, she cracked her province’s mixed team with the guys. “I was playing at a pretty high level when I was young,” she said. “It took me a little bit to fully come into my own and break through that shell, but those experiences helped me become the player I am now.”
For those unfamiliar with para ice hockey, Mah says the sport is much closer to the traditional game than most expect.
“It’s really fast, fast-paced, physical — honestly not much unlike stand-up hockey,” she explained. “There’s a couple changes, but for the most part, it’s what you’d expect from a regular hockey game.”
The biggest adjustment? Two sticks instead of one.
“I actually think it makes para ice hockey cooler than normal hockey,” she laughed. “You can do so much more with the puck — go underneath your sled to yourself, pass in front, and you have to shoot and stick-handle with both your dominant and non-dominant hands. You naturally become ambidextrous.”
All Eyes On The First Ever World Championship
With the first-ever Women’s Para Ice Hockey World Championship just weeks away, Mah is all in. Having recently completed her master’s degree, she’s now able to dedicate more time than ever to training.
“It’s about incorporating all those little high-performance habits into my lifestyle every day,” she said. “Actually sleeping eight hours, getting in all your meals — even on days when it feels so hard, it’s like, no, I need to go to the gym. I need to do all these things.”
The Edmonton native is eager not just to play, but to win. “We definitely have our sights set on winning our first-ever championship,” Mah said. “Just being in the history books to participate is a big milestone, but actually capturing that first Worlds is what’s on all of our minds right now.”
Beyond Worlds, the long-term goal is even bigger — the Paralympic Games. “2030 is the year we’re honing in on,” Mah explained. “This is the very first big step in getting there.”
Mah describes the Canadian women’s squad as tight-knit despite its wide age range — from 16-year-olds to veterans in their 30s.
“On a typical team, you wouldn’t see that, but in sledge it’s normal,” she said. “Even though we’re at such different stages of life, we’re all able to still bond over something and find little things in common. It’s a good group.”
When she’s not training or competing, Mah can usually be found curled up with a book. “I’m really into reading,” she said. “A little bit of everything — fiction, non-fiction — but I’ve been getting into fun stories from the ’70s and ’80s lately.”
And if she could pick one superpower to help her on the ice? “Maybe super speed or invisibility,” Mah laughed. “You’d just see a little puck going around and never know where I am.”
As the first puck drops at Worlds, Alanna Mah will be ready — for the moment, for her team, and for history.