Sarah Nurse has accomplished all sorts of significant firsts in her hockey career.
Nurse was the first black woman to win Olympic gold in hockey in 2022. She became the first woman to appear on the cover of an NHL video game when she shared the cover of NHL 23 with Trevor Zegras.
When she takes the ice for PWHL Vancouver in November with new teammate Sophie Jaques, she’ll experience a different type of first.
“I think that it’s really special,” said Nurse. “People always ask us questions about playing with other black hockey players. Growing up, throughout my minor career, throughout my college career, throughout my professional career, I’ve never really been able to play with another Black player.”
"It's going to be pretty impactful"
Last year, Nurse and Jaques did an interview with TSN for Black History Month, where Nurse said to Jaques, “I hope we get to play together one day.” They got their first opportunity to play together for Team Canada at the 2025 World Championship, but now they’ll be teammates on a daily basis in Vancouver.
Hockey has long been a predominantly white sport, particularly at the professional level. As of 2020, less than five per cent of the players in the NHL were Black or people of colour; when the PWHL played its first season in 2024, just four players in the league were Black: Nurse, Jaques, Mikayla Grant-Menthis, and Nikki Nightengale.
Now, two of those players are on PWHL Vancouver.
“To be able to play with Sophie, I think it’s going to be amazing,” said Nurse. “There’s obviously that huge representation piece, so it’s really exciting. I think it’s going to be pretty impactful.”
It's not just that Nurse and Jaques are going to be on the same roster; they could also be the team's two biggest stars. When Nurse won gold, she set an Olympic record with 18 points in 7 games in the process, while Jaques led all PWHL defencemen in scoring last season.
Nurse has spoken before about experiencing both sexism and racism in hockey, something that was made all the more challenging because she saw so few people who looked like her in hockey. It’s something she and Jaques are hoping will change.
“It’s very cool to have someone that even looks like you on your team,” said Jaques. “I think it just goes to emphasize the fact that representation does matter. It might be something as small as giving you a little bit more comfort, or having a second opinion to bounce ideas off of, or, when things maybe potentially happen, you know you have someone else who's for sure on your side.”
"It's all about the representation, right?"
Jaques noted that her experience wasn’t a mirror to that of Nurse, as she did get an opportunity to play with another Black player in college.
“I was very fortunate,” said Jaques. “I didn’t have anyone in all of minor hockey, but when I got to Ohio State, there was actually one other Black female on the team, and she really helped me and mentored me. I think that was a really great transition for me, having her there.”
That teammate was Olivia Soares, who was in her third year at Ohio State when Jaques joined the team. Soares was an alternate captain in Jaques’s first year, then was named captain the following year. After graduating, she went into coaching and is currently an assistant coach with the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
When Jaques became the first black woman to win the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in the NCAA, Soares said she cried.
"As a younger player, I wish I could have turned this on and seen something like this," said Soares at the time. "To see her doing that now, and I know there are younger players watching who idolize her and see this and think that they want to do that someday and imagine themselves in that space and winning that award."
That’s something both Nurse and Jaques emphasized: how much representation matters for the next generation of hockey players.
When Nurse was with the Toronto Sceptres the past two seasons, she hosted “Nursey Nights” in partnership with the Black Girl Hockey Club to bring young girls of colour out to games, who might have otherwise been unable to attend. It’s something she’s planning to bring to Vancouver as well.
“I think it’s all about the representation, right?” said Nurse. “It’s about showing young people something they can aspire to be, what they can possibly be one day. From what I understand, Vancouver’s a pretty diverse place as well, so I think our hockey team should really reflect that.
“This is our national sport here in Canada, we’re a multicultural society, so I think our professional women’s hockey teams should reflect that as well.”
"There’s more and more colour within minor hockey"
Jaques has been heavily involved with Black Girl Hockey Club Canada over the past few years, first connecting with the U.S. side of the organization in her final year at Ohio State before jumping to the Canadian side and working with Saroya Tinker, the executive director of Black Girl Hockey Club Canada and the PWHL's manager of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives & Community Engagement.
“The camps we run and seeing all the girls that come out to those, and then on top of that, us just being there and being role models, I think it inspires a lot of girls to stay in the sport,” said Jaques. “Having organizations like the Black Girl Hockey Club Canada, who help to break down the barriers to get into the sport, such as financial costs, which is a tough one for hockey, I think it’s just so cool to have those numbers keep growing.
“You can see, there’s more and more colour within minor hockey, so you have to assume it will continue to trickle on to each next level. Even in my time in the NCAA, the number of women of colour in that league continued to grow.”
Nurse has seen similar scenes herself.
“I’ve seen the growth of women’s hockey in general, but I’ve also seen the growth of young black women playing hockey,” said Nurse. “It’s cool to see them excel. There are girls in high school right now, girls in university and college, who are doing really amazing things, who are going to one day be able to step in that league, whether it’s next year or it’s 5-10 years down the road.”
Those experiences give Nurse and Jaques hope that a roster like PWHL Vancouver’s won’t be so unusual in the future.
“Definitely, you want to hope that one day, it’s not a rarity,” said Jaques. “But I think you still want to appreciate the moment.”
