After my time at Quinnipiac I was presented with the opportunity to play overseas in Murzzuschlag, Austria. The opportunity was presented to me by a former teammate, Elyse Cole, who played the year before in Salzburg, Austria, and now had the chance to play for a new team in Murzzuschlag. The name of our team was the Neuberg Highlanders.

Women’s ice hockey in Austria was and still is pretty much unheard of. Hockey isn’t a very common sport in Austria and the fact that girls actually played hockey made people that much more interested. Our town is quite small so we were known to all of the locals and were able to attract some fans and interest to the sport.

Elyse and I lived in a flat with another Canadian from Alberta who also just graduated from Quinnipiac University. The people from our team were extremely welcoming and couldn’t of been more hospitable toward us.

It was difficult at times because of the language barrier and made me wish that I had tried to pick up some German before I left. But by the end, I had a couple words to bring home with me!

We were able to travel all around Europe from Austria to Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, and Germany. One of the reasons they wanted to bring us over was to help build the level of competition because women’s ice hockey is at risk of being eliminated as an Olympic sport.

As of now, Elyse is still over there playing and coaching for both the teams the Highlanders have. I have come back to Canada to start back up at school and am taking a two year program in Culinary Management.

Photo credit: Lawrence Bremer