My grandparents moved to Denver, Colorado in 1974 from Omaha, Nebraska. My grandfather bought 4 things when they got here; a house, a car, a loaf of bread, and Denver Broncos season tickets. He had those tickets until he passed aware in the Spring of 2021. And now, my uncle has them. In 1995, the Quebec Nordiques relocated to my hometown as the Colorado Avalanche. My dad bought season tickets the next year and in 2001 he was sitting 3 rows up from the glass when they won their second Stanley Cup. I played soccer for 4 years. I did gymnastics for 11 years. I played volleyball. I ice skated. I was on the intermural teams in elementary and middle school. My best friends in high school played basketball so I managed the team for 2 years. I played varsity tennis in high school. Sports have always been in the background of my life. When I was growing up, hockey was on TV more than anything else. I knew who Patrick Roy was before I knew my ABCs. Last summer, the Colorado Avalanche won their 3rd Stanley Cup. I was sitting on the floor in my living room. The game was on the TV and my best friends were sitting on either side of me. My parents were on the couch behind us and my dad and I were hoarse from screaming so loudly. The clock clicked down. 3 seconds left. Nathan MacKinnon has the puck on his stick. 2 seconds left and he passed it up the boards. The buzzer sounded and all of the Colorado Avalanche players I had been watching for most of my life flooded onto the ice. It was a moment I had been waiting 20 years to see. In 2020, Kim Ng was named the general manager of the Miami Marlins. Emile Castonguay and Cammi Granato are the AGMs for the Vancouver Canucks. I was my name to be with theirs. I was to inspire and motivate other little girls to do the same. I'm a Sports Management major at Long Island University with a concentration in Marketing & Communications. I work for the hockey team at my school running the social media and working closely with the director of operations on gameday procedures. I work for a relatively small sports media company called Vendetta Sports Media covering news across the NHL and NBA. Along with my experience in sports, I'm also the former Vice President of Communications and Public Relations for my sorority, Alpha Xi Delta. My goal for the future is to be the general manager of a team in the National Hockey League. Whether or not you think this is realistic is up to you. I'm grateful for all the experience I have for only being 21 years old. I'm looking forward to learning more as I finish my degree and transition from being a student to being in the industry.

I grew up playing just about every sport under the sun. My grandpa had Broncos season tickets from 1974 until the day he died. My dad was at the final in 2001 when our hometown Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup. I taught myself how to watch basketball in high school when I managed the team and my best friend played. Sports have always been in the background of my life but it wasn't until my senior year of high school that I realized how important they had been to me the whole time. I also realized that there weren't any women in leadership in the sports industry to look up to. So I decided that I would become that for the little girls who come after me. I grew up watching hockey more than anything just about else. Currently, I'm a sports management major at Long Island University and I run the social media for the women's hockey team here. I also run in-game stats for the men's and women's games. I've held a writer's position and social media position at Vendetta Sports Media for just over 3 semesters now. My ultimate goal is to be a general manager in the NHL. Whether that's realistic or not is up to you. I want little girls to look at me and know that they can do it too. Or that they can play football or baseball or be a race car driver. I don't want them to think that because they don't see women in these roles, they don't have these opportunities. Jane and the Dragon is an old cartoon I used to watch at my grandma’s house every day. Jane was about 12 years old and her mother and father were the King and Queen of Kippernium. That made Jane a princess and a lady in waiting. But Jane didn’t want that. More than anything, she wanted to be a knight. After saving a prince from a fire-breathing dragon, the King agrees to allow her to train with the King’s Guard. She was at the top of her class. Now I didn't bring that up because my family doesn't support me or cheer me on at every second they can. I just don't think it's a coincidence that my middle name is Jane. See you at the Stanely Cup.

I work in retail. I work at a Vans store in suburban Denver, Colorado. With back-to-school season in full swing, we have little kids running around the store all the time. A little boy came in today with his mom and two older brothers. The boy was starting first grade and his brothers couldn't have been older than 6th or 7th grade. I asked the boy if he wanted to try some shoes on and he reluctantly pointed to some with sharks. His oldest brother bent down and said "why don't you show her the ones you actually want to try?" He got a big gap-tooth smile on his face and grabbed the pink glittery sneakers off the shelf and handed them to me. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any glittery ones that fit him very well. But...he did leave in a killer pair of purple floral patterned Vans with a matching shirt. (His brothers got the matching bucket hats) This gives me so much hope for the future because this 6 year old boy was comfortable enough with his family that he wasn't afraid to express his not-so-traditional wants and desires with them. It gives me, even more, hope that his big brother stepped up and advocated for him in a time when he wasn't comfortable. And I'm a stranger. It's okay that he wasn't comfortable. Stranger danger. This isn't an uncommon thing to see in younger kids these days. Millennials and Gen Z are raising their children much differently from how they were brought up and how their parents were raised. I am very grateful that my parents instilled in me a love for all humans. They did their best to educate me on oppression from a very young age. These days, I have to educate them on current events, but they are more than willing to listen and learn. I hope that I can pass that love for all humans onto my children. I hope my peers can pass it onto their children. And I hope that maybe one day, we can turn the trajectory of modern society around.

The coach of one of my favorite hockey teams is Barry Trotz. He's the third most successful coach in the National Hockey League and the two above him are long retired. In just three seasons with the New York Islanders, he brought them from a bottom-16 team to making three playoffs in a row. In his first season on the Island, right before his team won their first playoff series in 31 years he said, "If you want to go somewhere fast, you go alone. If you want to go somewhere far, you go together." I was a senior in high school when this happened and I wasn't an Islanders fan yet. This quote didn't become applicable to me until this year. It wasn't until last summer that I decided what I want to be once I'm finished with college. I want to be commissioner of the National Hockey League. Dreams like that don't happen in a day and you certainly can't do it all alone. This quote can also be completely unrelated to the buffoonery of the sport of hockey. No matter where you want to go or what you want to be, you can't do it alone. I have a terrible, horrible, very bad habit, of shutting people out when I'm depressed or anxious. Even if all you want to do is feel happy again, you need a support system of some kind. It's okay to ask for help sometimes. That's another thing I'm awful at. Admitting I need help. This quote reminds me that even in the toughest of times, anyone can persevere. (including 22 hockey players who collectively share approximately 3 brain cells) It reminds me that I might not be in the exact position I want to be in at this very moment in time and that's okay. It reminds me to be patient.

I'm the woman that I admire. I was raised by a 30-year career teacher who was raised by a first-generation American. I wasn't good at things growing up. I wasn't bad at things but I wasn't the gifted kid or the athlete or the theatre kid that got all the lead roles. I was just Emma. I'm still just Emma. When I was in 10th grade, I had pneumococcal pneumonia. Pneumonia's pretty common right? Right. But pneumococcal pneumonia is most commonly seen in geriatric patients. I was 15. My right lung so bogged down with fluid, it wasn't functioning. I spent 5 days in the hospital and missed 2 weeks of school including fall finals week right before winter break. When I was a junior in high school, I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Just in time for the previous 10 years of academic struggles to make sense...and just in time to not be able to do anything about it. I toughed it out for another year and a half until I graduated with a barely acceptable GPA. Now, I'm a sophomore in college and I haven't seen my campus in 397 days. My entire college career up to this point has been completely manhandled by a global pandemic. It is by far the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced in my vast 19 years of life. But here I am. Despite a lot of odds against me, I have a 3.2 GPA and I'm transferring to Long Island University in New York next fall to study sports management with a minor in communications. I'm the social media manager and one of few hockey bloggers for Vendetta Sports Media. And I've been hired for other freelance sports media writing jobs too. I admire all the women who came before me who are just as strong and who raised me to be this way. I've been knocked down so many times and had to pick myself up by my own bootstraps, I have to admire myself. As I continue to carry this much strength and courage with me on my adventure across the country, I can only hope that it brings me to new places and new heights I could have never imagined.