Laila Edwards: making history in Milan
The University of Wisconsin senior is making history as the first Black woman to play for Team USA hockey in the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Photo courtesy of SecretName101/Wikimedia Commons
The USA women’s hockey team kicked off the Olympics with a win, beating Czechia 5-1, as detailed on the official USA hockey website. However, for Laila Edwards, the USA’s first Olympic hockey game of 2026 was even more meaningful. Edwards became “the first Black woman to compete for the U.S. Olympic Women’s [USA hockey] Team,” as Team USA celebrated in an official post on X.
“She’s one of seven NCAA players representing [team] USA in Milano Cortina,” Yahoo Sports reported. Edwards traveled to this year’s Olympic Games from the University of Wisconsin—leaving behind her fellow Badgers to make history playing defense for Team USA, as detailed by her official player profiles on Team USA’s and UW Badgers’ websites.
The NCAA senior is not taking her responsibility as a history-making player lightly. “I have chosen and will continue to choose to embrace it… just to have that ability to be a role model and hear that people are looking up to me… I take that with a lot of pride and gratitude,” Edwards told ESPN. She went on to comment on the importance she sees for kids to be able to watch a player that looks like them be successful on a stage as big as the Olympic Games. She posted on her official Instagram account before the Olympics kicked off, “dream come true. ready to get things going in milan.”
While fans watched her historic Olympic debut with excitement, her presence on the team, as documented by NBC, also highlighted how difficult it could be for players of color. Edwards herself was unable to find role models who looked like her while she was growing up. Her spot on Team USA solidified her as only the second player of color on a USA Olympic hockey team. Jordan Greenway, Buffalo Sabres’ current left wing, was the first to reach this achievement during the 2018 Winter Olympics, NBC further detailed. Edwards joins him as the second player of color to play for Team USA hockey, and only the first Black woman to do so.
The spotlight of this stage did not interfere with Edwards’s play; in the first period of Team USA’s game against Czechia, she played in “the team’s top power play unit,” successfully setting up teammate Alex Carpenter for a goal after a rebound, as NBC explained.
Laila Edwards’s journey to this milestone began with her father’s encouragement when she was young. ESPN detailed Edwards’s journey, beginning with her father, Robert Edwards, playing hockey as a child, eventually encouraging his daughter to follow in his footsteps, not knowing the history she would go on to make. When she was young, she learned to skate and play hockey at the Cleveland Heights Community College, the same place where her father had played. ESPN further detailed the challenges Edwards faced as a young Black player: “Laila learned early that if she was going to play hockey, she probably wasn’t going to see many other players like her.” Edwards went on to recount some of the harassment she faced early on, saying, “There were a few times when I’d be called the N-word.”
She never let this stop her, Edwards kept playing hockey. Before this year’s winter Olympics, she had already made history as the youngest American player to win most valuable player (MVP) at the Women’s Hockey World Championships in 2024, as reported by CNN, and had become “a two-time collegiate national champion” according to Sporting News.