The women’s hockey team at Chatham University was honored at the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game on March 17 at PPG Paints Arena.
March 17 also serves as an important date for the team as the Pittsburgh City Council Chambers commemorated the day as “Chatham Women’s Hockey Day in Pittsburgh” in 1998 to mark the importance of the team.
In front of the largest recorded crowd ever for a women’s hockey game in Pittsburgh, the women’s team was invited to attend the game and watch from a suite. A video package played on the scoreboard during the first media timeout, to a large ovation from the more than 8,500 fans in attendance.
This is the first season for the PWHL, and the Cougars realize the importance of having this league for women’s hockey.
“I think that it’s awesome because usually people don’t see women’s hockey as a popular sport, and just seeing all the fans here, you can really see how women’s hockey is starting to grow,” Rainey Jessup ‘25 said. “A lot of people are starting to recognize that women can actually play hockey because there’s a stereotype that hockey is a man’s sport. So it’s awesome that we get to be here with our team as well.”
The game was filled with young girls holding signs saying they want to play professional hockey when they are old, something that wasn’t always the case for girls who played hockey, since the first league to ever pay women’s players began in 2015, and disbanded a few years later.
“It’s awesome to see all these posters and to see all these girls that this is their dream too, just like it was our dream when we were growing up,” Kara Luby ‘25 said.
The team’s assistant coach Jordan Ott played in a previous professional league for women, and hopes the strides the PWHL has already taken help young girls find a future in hockey.
“I think as a girl, it’s hard because you’ll stand there in the driveway, just like every other kid, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to go to the NHL,’” Ott said. “And as much as you wanted it to happen, it probably never was. And this is actually that in real life. So now every kid that’s standing there can actually have the realization of ‘It’s actually going to happen’ and have that chance.”
The group hopes to see the support for women’s hockey grow and see support for them when they return to the ice in the fall.
“I hope that it continues to grow,” Jessup said. “When I first started playing hockey, I started on boys’ teams because everyone was like, ‘Ah girls, can’t play hockey, they can’t hit, they can’t do all this stuff,’ so to see everybody here supporting the women’s hockey team, it’s awesome.”
