Playing it forward: Teagan Gray brings hockey and community to Jamaica

Teagan Gray is a fourth year health sciences student and left winger for the UW women’s hockey team. Off the ice, she’s a mentor with the Women of Colour Hockey Collective (WCHC). She’s also applying for medical school, with plans to become a doctor after graduating in 2027.

Hockey, as Gray puts it, “is just a very white-occupied sport, no matter [the] gender.” Through WCHC, she’s helping build the kind of community for young players of colour that she found when she first joined. This year, that work took her to Jamaica.

Gray and a group of WCHC mentors, made up of intercollegiate and professional women’s hockey players, travelled to Jamaica for an NHL-sponsored, three-day ball hockey camp. Held in an open room at the country’s national track facility, the camp welcomed about 50 children, none of whom had ever held a hockey stick. The goal was to teach them the game while building teamwork, friendships, and a sense of community.

“There’s this one kid, Michael — we called him MJ. He was my bestie,” Gray said. “He loved to dance, so we’d always do dance battles, and he could do backflips and all these crazy things.” MJ, about eight years old, raced her every day. “I’d always beat him, but then the last day he beat me, and it was a big deal.”

What stuck with her most happened off the court. At lunch, MJ had one sip of pop left and gave it to a friend who hadn’t gotten one that day. “It was really good to see the community they’d already built, the friendships,” Gray said. “Hopefully they’re able to keep enacting that, because I guess that’s the goal of sport.”

Gray’s own community started in Grade 9, when her mentor Soraya brought her into what was then called the Black Girls Hockey Club. The group has since become WCHC.

The friendships lasted. Two of her current teammates are women she first met through the club. Many WCHC members now play professionally, giving younger players a network of knowledge and a place to talk things through.

Now Gray wants to give that same experience to the next generation. She also wants to remind them that the game is supposed to be fun.

“There’s a lot of kids that take hockey too seriously too soon,” she said. “I wanted to foster an environment where it’s okay to make mistakes and laugh about it, and be authentically yourself going into any space, knowing you have a group of people supporting you no matter what.”

Between varsity hockey, a pre-med course load, and her work with WCHC, Gray’s schedule is full. Her motto keeps her going: “Things are hard now or they’re hard later.”

“If you’re able to keep pushing yourself and see a goal, see a purpose, and for me, that’s connecting with people and being able to support people, that’s what keeps me going,” she said. “I know it’s cliché, but it really doesn’t feel like work. I’m having a blast the whole time.”

Her advice to her younger self is the same message she tried to pass on in Jamaica.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the noise of who people think you should be, but you’ll always find a lot more joy being who you are, and you’ll find community,” she said. “Stay true to yourself, and remember to smile. Nothing’s ever that serious.”