It’s been nonstop sports which is something I absolutely love but I figured I’d give it a rest this week and give everyone a look at how I got into this career in the first place. On one side of my family all of my cousins are boys and all six of them played hockey and of course I had to be like the boys so I chose to start playing hockey from the age of five. I immediately fell in love with the sport and it’s all I wanted to do with my life. 

Once I got to the high school age and realized my dreams may have to be adjusted a bit because my NHL career wasn’t going to pan out, I had to make some decisions. Backing it up a little bit to eighth grade, we did a newspaper project and I was able to help build a newspaper and write sports, well I found my next interest. It may have been just a project to most of my classmates but to me it was my future career path. From then on, I wanted to write about sports and of course the first being the Minnesota Wild. 

Fast forward to high school graduation and I had my decision on what I wanted to do but I didn’t know where. I spent time looking at different colleges and eventually settled on the University of North Dakota, one of the top Division One hockey schools in the nation, I was in heaven but it would get better and slightly worse. Pretty much the first month I was there I went and applied to work for the college newspaper and got a job writing sports. Even better, I became the beat writer for the women’s hockey team where I got to interview their coach and other players and write, write, write. 

The bad news was shortly after I graduated college, they cut the women’s hockey team. It was devasting and I still feel bad for the players now. 

However, life has to go on. I ended up finishing my college degree online from home and I was able to get an internship with the Minnesota Swarm writing for their website. Another job I loved but the team would move right after my internship finished. However, I still knew what I wanted to do in life I just had to find a place to work. 

I took a side path working in retail but eventually found my place writing for a website and this newspaper and I still love it more than ever. I do still work in retail but now it’s dealing with sports as well. All of my jobs center around sports and it’s a pretty fun life. My main focus is hockey but I’m familiar with all sports and have written about pretty much all of them including golf and swimming. 

On a note away from work, in October I got married to my husband who I’ve been with for the past ten years. As a wedding gift he surprised me with a Kirill Kaprizov signed custom jersey, I think he’s a keeper! We purchased our dream home the same day we got engaged, he actually proposed on the front step and it was a perfect moment. I still play hockey when there’s open women’s hockey and when I’m not writing hockey, I’m usually reading about it from the numerous hockey books I own. 

We’re looking forward to it being summer so we can grill outside as much as possible and sit on our back deck or our new hammock. I’m pretty lucky and as time goes on I only realize this more and more. However, to wrap it up on a sports note, it’s almost time for the NHL playoffs and I can’t wait!