Trans hockey player competing in final USA Hockey nationals after ban
Trans athlete Sarah Antaya is playing at the USA Hockey Adult National Championships, the last before the ban on trans women takes effect. The post Trans hockey player competing in final USA Hockey nationals after ban appeared first on Outsports.
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The USA Hockey Long Drink Women’s Adult National Championships opened Thursday in Wesley Chapel, Fla.
Among the over 1,000 players set to skate and shoot toward a championship is a 49-year-old trans woman from Lansing, Mich., named Sarah Antaya. Like most making this trip, she loves this game.
She’s also playing on borrowed time. Because of USA Hockey’s ban on trans women in women’s hockey, this nationals will be the last in which she and other trans players like her will be allowed to play.
“What this means to me, is just the fact that I’m just one of the girls, and I just get to go along, and I get to have a big blowout hockey weekend with all of my friends,” Antaya said of playing in the tournament. “This is theoretically my last one, so this year is a bit bittersweet. I’m sure that when the last game hits this weekend there’s gonna be some emotions there.”
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She’ll have a lot of games to play to process those emotions. This tournament will be double duty for Antaya as a reserve for the 21-under Motor City Blues and and with Team Michigan in the 40-over division.
At the same time, such a schedule makes perfect sense for someone who has seen a hockey stick as an extension of her body since being the part of a middle school state championship team as a kid. She’s now a hockey parent, in addition to years of being a regular in every rec league she could find.
For much of her life this has been her game, but when she started her transition she was off the ice — But hockey was never too far away.
“I didn’t come out to my 40s and I remember feeling that way back when I was coming out of college. Like, yeah, it’d be great, but I can’t make these decisions, I can’t transition,” she recalled.
“I had never told a soul until I came out to my wife about seven years ago. Before that, I have never told a soul on this planet.”
A year after the revelation and moving forward, hockey drew Antaya back in.
“I was really struggling, because things were just stressful and am I ever gonna get to the point where I’m comfortable being out,” she noted. “I just randomly googled ‘transgender hockey’ and I saw something about Team Trans Friendship Series in Boston.”
Within a year she was in a Team Trans sweater out on the ice skating and passing alongside pioneers like Harrison Browne and Jessica Platt. Having the chance to play and just be bolstered her confidence to sign up for a rec league back home that was majority cisgender players last year.
In time she fell in with a group who ended up inviting Antaya to join them to play at USA Hockey Adult Nationals last year.
“Some of the other ladies are there, and they’re like we’re putting together a 40-and-over team would you like to join us,” she remembered. “That was how welcoming that group was right out of the chute.”
Antaya had the opportunity to communicate stories like that to the rules makers at USA Hockey as a new policy was debated last year. USA Hockey ultimately went a different route, banning trans women from women’s competitions.
“There’s people that say we didn’t really want to do this. We liked our old policy,” she noted. “But they basically felt like, from a legal standpoint, we’re not willing to put our status as a sanctioning body of hockey in the United States at risk to support you. It still stinks. It still hurts, but that’s the reality of where we are right now.”
USA Hockey board members are attending the championships, and Antaya said she plans on meeting with them while also fighting for every win. She also plans to enjoy the moment, even if it is potentially the last one at this stage. For the time being.
“I want to play well. I want to do well. I want to show that I can compete. But, I really just want to spend that time with my friends. I want to take it all in and, when it’s all said and done, it’s going to be rough and a lot of tears probably.”
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The post Trans hockey player competing in final USA Hockey nationals after ban appeared first on Outsports.
