Jincy Roese has gone from roller hockey in St. Louis, to boys hockey alongside NHL stars, to a leadership role with PWHL Ottawa.
Jincy Roese has gone from roller hockey in St. Louis, to boys hockey alongside NHL stars, to a leadership role with PWHL Ottawa.
Jincy Roese’s love of hockey started in her hometown of St. Louis at the age of five: but it wasn’t ice hockey, it was roller hockey. That little girl couldn’t have known that she would one day trade roller skates for ice skates, play alongside hockey royalty, and eventually end up in the ranks of the pros with PWHL Ottawa.
Roese, 26, is a silky defender who evades forecheckers with her beautiful skating strides, poise, and leadership that together make her one of the best players in the world.
It all began alongside brother Josh Dunne, one of her five siblings in the Dunne family.
“We did everything together growing up and he loves sports and he wanted to try hockey and I didn't get much of a say in the matter,” said Roese.
“And then when I was like 10 or 11, more of our friends started to play ice hockey and we're like, oh, we'll go with them and try it out.”
There are many things to love about Roese's game, and there's many things she loves about the game itself.
“I would say one of the compliments that I get about my game is just poise and patience,” said Roese. “The roller game is a lot slower. It's a lot of strategy behind it; it's really just puck possession. So, I would say that set a good foundation.”
And then she had a stroke of luck. After a couple years playing hockey with her brother and older sister Jessica, she caught the eye of St. Louis Blues’ legend and Hockey Hall of Fame blueliner Al MacInnis, who had recently retired but decided to live in St. Louis. MacInnis’ daughter Lauren was a teammate of Roese's in St. Louis, and is now a reserve player in PWHL Ottawa.
“I think Al was actually the reason I was able to get an opportunity to play on the boys’ team,” says Roese. “MacInnis said you need to give this girl a shot.”
With MacInnis’ intervention, at age 13 she ended up on the Junior Blues, as a teammate of future Calgary Flames and Florida Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk. Jincy’s brother Josh played on a younger Junior Blues team with future Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk.
Roese remembers fondly hanging out with the Tkachuks and their family. She even went on road trips with the Tkachuks’ grandparents.
“We were weird adolescent teenagers at the time. So, I tried to respect the guys’ space, but it was good,” said Roese.
On the ice, she was learning. And toughening up.
“I was getting rocked at certain times,” said Roese. It allowed Roese to learn how to play in a physical game while teaching and forcing her to make quick and the correct decisions on the ice.
“Who am I going to pass to?” said Roese. “Like, okay, if I'm this girl, I'm not going to pass her from setting her up to get killed.”
Fast forward from the Junior Blues to the U-18 women’s USA national team, where she made her debut at age 15, to one of the last cuts of the 2014 US Olympic national team. She went on to be a star at Ohio State, tallying 99 points in 147 games on defence. Her younger sister Joy Dunne is currently a standout with Ohio State's women's team, and an upcoming star within USA's national program.
For Roese, ss it did for a lot of people, the COVID pandemic put her at a crossroads. Stuck back at home in St. Louis, she plotted her future.
“Figuring out your own way to stay in shape and get better and I did some coaching on the side to make money. It's pretty much what you do," said Roese. “Spent all day training and then I would help out, I would volunteer, I would go help coach.”
She won silver with the 2022 US Olympic team at the lockdown Olympics in Beijing.
She then played for Team Adidas in the PWHPA in the 2022-23 season. That summer, she married long-time boyfriend Isaac Roese, and followed him to New York City.
The draft for the PWHL last summer offered a new twist to her career.
“I honestly had no idea what to expect,” she said. Ottawa selected Roese in the third round.
“I didn't know much about Ottawa,” said Roese. “But I think of all the teams it seemed like they had the most interest in me...I love being here.”
Roese says her younger siblings used to call her “Jin mama” because of the way she looked after them and she has fallen into a similar role on her new team.
“I always just want to make sure that I'm at my best and I'm genuinely having the most fun when I can see my teammates enjoying it,” says Roese.
Defensive teammate, Zoe Boyd, agrees.
“She's a role model to me...She's just a great gal," said Boyd. "And to have her next to me on the bench, she’s definitely a super important person on the team.”
Being a role model is important to Roese because role models were important to her. She calls it “the opportunity of a lifetime to pay respect to people that did trailblaze for us and make this happen.”
It crystallized for Roese when Ottawa played New York recently in front of 8,062 fans.
“I'm thinking who's going to show up to the Sunday game at one [o’clock] in Ottawa, and we had a full house and so that's just super cool.”
What would 13-year-old Jincy have made of it all?
“Oh, I probably would have been like: ‘it's not for real’. That's a dream come true. That's not real life.”