Laura Stacey, Canadian women's hockey national team member discusses her Sticks In For Charity Road Hockey Tournament.
Laura Stacey, Canadian women's hockey national team member discusses her Sticks In For Charity Road Hockey Tournament.
Laura Stacey is a champion on the ice. On the street, she's build opportunities for others to reach for their own dreams.
When Stacey's fifth annual "Sticks In For Charity Road Hockey Tournament" hits the street in Etobicoke, Ontario in June, the Canadian national team and PWHPA member hopes to build on the $20,000 the event donated to Kids Sport Ontario last year. It's a goal to not just raise money, but to open doors for youth in sport.
For Stacey, the event started following a low point in her athletic career, a gold medal loss to Team USA at the 2018 Olympics. From that moment, Stacey decided to find the fun in the sport again by playing road hockey for her birthday, and Sticks In was born.
"I was pretty...demoralized," said Stacey of the Olympic aftermath. "Everything hits you really quick when you come back from the Olympics. And so it was my birthday in May and me and my family, and specifically my brother-in-law, we were outside playing road hockey, just having some fun, shooting on a net and playing in the street, and all of a sudden this big game broke out."
Soon, people from houses on the street were joining, and Stacey was brought back to her childhood. From that moment, the idea of Sticks In For Charity was born.
"I just wanted to have fun, I wanted to kind of bring that exact game we had on my birthday in a bigger scale and get the whole community kind of involved and have my friends out," said Stacey. "It ended up blowing up and turning into something way bigger than I ever thought it could."
Through that growth, Stacey and her Canadian teammates who turn up each year to play in the event and continue to use those funds to support organizations like Kids Sport Ontario to reduce costs for youth to join sport.
"We have the possibility to use that momentum and use those funds that we raised throughout the tournament to give back and get more kids involved in sport and to break more barriers and to hope that every single person has the chance to play sport."
To learn more about Laura Stacey's Sticks In For Charity Road Hockey Tournament, visit her website laurastacey7.ca.
Listen to the full conversation below: