The following is an excerpt from “Black Aces: Essential Stories from Hockey’s Black Trailblazers” by The Athletic’s Julian McKenzie, copyright @2026 and reprinted with permission from Triumph Books. All rights reserved. The book is available for purchase here.
It was a winter’s night in February 2002 when Sarah Nurse was at her grandparents’ home. Her grandmother and pépère — both French Canadian and from Nurse’s mother’s side of the family — invited Nurse to watch the Olympic women’s hockey gold-medal final. Nurse had turned 7 years old one month earlier and was about two years into her hockey journey.
As young as 3, Sarah took up figure skating. She wanted to learn how to skate, and the sport became her entry point. Her father, Roger, would take her to Gage Park in her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, and teach her as she wore double-bladed skates.
Sarah eventually transitioned from figure skating to hockey, thanks in part to her father. After coming to Canada, Roger became a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and watched games at the Maple Leaf Gardens. Sarah eventually took after her father and embraced Leafs fandom, watching team legends like Tie Domi, Tomáš Kaberle and Curtis Joseph. Mats Sundin was her favorite.
“He’s the captain,” Nurse said. “Iconic. He’s always scoring goals.”
Nurse didn’t visit her grandparents’ house to watch the men’s squad play that night. Nurse wasn’t fully aware at the time, but the team she’d watch compete for an Olympic gold medal would change her hockey life forever. Before the Canadian men squared off against the United States, Team Canada’s women’s hockey team had a gold-medal date of its own against the United States in Salt Lake City that year. It was all about revenge. The United States one-upped Canada at the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. It was the first year women were part of ice hockey competition at the Olympics.
Canada finally exacted its revenge with a 3-2 gold-medal victory and reveled in beating its cross-border rival. Hayley Wickenheiser even alleged that the Americans stomped on the Canadian flag in their own dressing room and defiantly told the media afterward that she’d want the flag signed. The comments led to investigations by both USA Hockey and the Canadian Hockey Association (now known as Hockey Canada), which later revealed that the Americans hadn’t engaged in such civil disrespect.
Nurse was inspired by the Canadian women’s national team, as were many other young Canadian women that day. Nurse played hockey on a boys’ house-league team with a female teammate, but she had no idea of any women’s teams playing hockey at any level.
“I remember thinking we’re the only two who are doing this; there are no other girls who play hockey,” Nurse said. “When I got to my grandparents’ house that night, I was just blown away that there wasn’t one team of girls, there was two teams of girls — and they’re playing on TV. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Like, I have to be on this team one day.’”
Sarah Nurse (20) and Claire Thompson celebrated with teammates after Team Canada’s Winter Olympics championship win against the United States in 2002. (Elsa / Getty Images)
Wanting to be like the women on the ice, Nurse ran into her grandmother’s craft nook during a break in the game. She grabbed a pair of scissors and some construction paper and got to work. The final product was a handful of homemade Olympic medals. Nurse gave one to each of her family members once she finished. Sarah’s own was colored yellow for gold, held up by a blue ribbon.
As the paper heirlooms were passed along to relatives, Sarah spoke her dream out into the universe with one line that resonated with family.
When I play for Team Canada one day …
“From that moment on, I talked about playing at the Olympics and playing for Team Canada,” Nurse said. “It was like, ‘When I make that team …’ I never said ‘if .’ I never doubted it.”
Twenty years after the fact, Canada secured a gold-medal win over the United States. When the final buzzer sounded, Nurse became the first Black female hockey player to win an Olympic gold medal.
Thanks to an assist on Marie-Philip Poulin’s second goal of Canada’s gold-medal win over the United States, Nurse had broken Wickenheiser’s record for assists and points in a single Olympics.
“There were so many women I knew of who played for their national teams,” Nurse said. “There was Angela James, who I knew didn’t go to an Olympics, but I knew that she was such an impactful player and had such a big impact on Hockey Canada, in the Hall of Fame and (has) all of these incredible accolades. There’s Blake Bolden who, again, you don’t think about these women not going to the Olympics or not winning a gold medal.”
Twenty years after making a gold medal out of paper and dreaming of winning it on the world’s biggest stage, Nurse earned a real one and made history in the process.
