Odd Girl Out: Sophomore Izzy Wong — a new member of the Team Colorado AA 16U Girls Hockey Team — works on balancing her school year while traveling almost weekly for her hockey teams

For sophomore Izzy Wong’s dad JeanPaul Wong, watching his daughter play a sport that’s male-dominated is why he loves watching Wong play hockey. In fact, she plays on a local high school club team made solely of boys — Carriage Club Varsity — as a goalie. But that’s not all that Wong does.

“She’s representing women empowerment in a huge way,” JeanPaul said. “It is a little scary to see her in the goal defending against shots that might be going 100mph, or that the game depends on her. But goalie parents cope with that.”

Growing up as a figure skater until the age of nine, Wong had been around the ice from a young age. Watching her brother — East alum Travers Wong — play hockey became more than entertainment, she was infatuated with the sport. Later after the realization, Wong began her hockey career in third grade.

Wong is currently signed up to play in three teams for this upcoming season, two of which she has been involved with for many years previously. Her line-up consists of Carriage Club Varsity — an (almost) all boys horse team, KC Storm — an AA varsity all-girls traveling team and now, Team Colorado. 

“Team CO is a AA 16U all-girls national bound traveling team,” Izzy’s dad JeanPaul said. “Between these 3 teams, I bet she has the opportunity to be out of the KC area at least every 2 weeks, sometimes more.”

Wong will have to be in Colorado each weekend for hockey season from January to April, with only a short break from traveling for Thanksgiving and New Years.

Wong originally wanted to try out in May for the 16U AAA Colorado team, but wasn’t able to due to conflicts with the finals schedule. Wong found an AA tryout for Team CO through social media and decided to try it out.

Wong left her fourth hour on August 26th to drive to Littleton, Colorado, where she tried out for the team.

“We had two practices on the 27th, they were 30 minute long practices and drills, working on skills,” Wong said. “Then the second practice was scrimmages, playing against each other on teams. Then we had one practice on the 28th before tryouts where we did the same things again  [drills, skills and scrimmages].”

As Wong headed back to Prairie Village a few days later, she was notified she made the 16U team.

Being the only out-of-state player on the AA 16U Colorado Team had led to Wong having worries about matching her skills and level to her other teammates, who have had years of training that she can’t get in Kansas, but when JeanPaul watched Izzy at tryouts, he knew she could do it.

“Typically players from Colorado have the opportunity to practice year-round and tend to be more advanced than players from our area of the Midwest,” JeanPaul said. “But when I watched her tryout, I realized that she could play at their level”

Wong is just coming to the realization that she will start having to email her teachers about missing school, getting her homework ahead of time and being prepared to have a car ride full of homework every other week. But for Wong, the 11 hours she spent listening to an audiobook of The Glass Castle on two times speed was just the start of the school challenges she is going to face this upcoming year. 

“It’s worth it to me to be seen by new coaches and new people,” Wong said. “I wanna play in college when I’m older so I need to be noticed.”