NYR's Sojung Shin: Blazing Trails

Sojung Shin: Blazing Trails

Throughout her career, after Sojung attained one goal she would pursue another and continued to blaze a trail for women's hockey in Korea. After high school, she yearned to play college hockey in North America (there were no college teams for women in Korea).

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This is a fantastic article. We all know that being a pioneer/trail blazer in anything is hard, but Shin's journey was even harder than most.

According to IIHF statistics, Canada has 87,500 registered female hockey players; United States has 73,076; Finland has 5,950; Sweden has 5,014; Japan has 2,586; and Korea has 259!

She started playing at age 7 as a forward and switched to become a goalie, making her the first female goalie in Korea. That was the first of many firsts this incredible woman would have.

The women's national hockey team is the only women's hockey team in the entire country, so she started playing for them at age 12 (!). The national team only plays a few games each year, so she honed her skills on boys teams; however, she was only permitted to practice with them, not play in games.. She went to every single tournament and championship which the national team was part of, but she knew if she truly wanted to develop further, she'd need to play regularly, so she set her sights on North America, even though she barely spoke English.

She personally emailed NCAA and CIS schools, and was accepted to a school in Nova Scotia, becoming the first Korean born female hockey player to participate in the CIS program or to play in North America. Her English skills were limited, but she went, and four years later, after very hard work, she graduated with a degree and she had developed her hockey skills.

Prior to this season, she learned that Korea is hosting the 2018 Olympics, giving them an automatic spot in the Olympic hockey program (their hockey team has never managed to qualify for the Olympics before, but host nations always get to participate in each sporting event). She wanted to be prepared so she contacted Dani Rylan of the NWHL, who put her in touch with Chad Wiseman, the New York Riveters coach, and she became the first Korean born female hockey player in a professional league.

You should really read the entire article. She's an amazing woman!