A 16-year-old girl from Strabane, Northern Ireland, is moving more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to chase a career in ice hockey. Molly McGilligan has been accepted into an elite boarding school for student athletes on Prince Edward Island, where she will combine her studies with high-level hockey training, according to Yahoo Sports.
The move caps years of sacrifice and long travel. For the past four years, Molly made twice-weekly, three-hour round trips from Strabane to Belfast to train with the Junior Belfast Giants youth development program. She also made regular ferry crossings from Northern Ireland to Scotland to compete in women's hockey, something she could not find closer to home.
Her path into the sport started at around age 10, when her parents took her to a Belfast Giants game.
"I knew straight away that I wanted to try it," she told BBC Radio Foyle's Mark Patterson Show. "I played some field hockey, but never ice hockey. It's just so fast and so different from any other sport I'd ever seen before."
Growing up in County Tyrone created real obstacles. The only permanent, year-round public ice rink on the entire island of Ireland is the Dundonald International Ice Bowl on the outskirts of east Belfast. That meant long drives were simply part of the routine from the beginning.
Most of the teams Molly played on growing up were predominantly male. Female players her age were scarce, and mixed teams were her only option at the youth level for years.
"Playing with the boys in the Belfast Giants junior team and national level was really great at junior level, but I really wanted to get more experience in the women's game, and travelling to Scotland was my only way to experience that," she said.
Over the past two seasons, Molly played for the Caledonia Steel Queens in Edinburgh, an all-female Scottish side competing in the Women's National Ice Hockey League. She has also represented Ireland internationally with the Irish Saints, the official National Youth Development Ice Hockey Team operated by the Irish Ice Hockey Association, competing in tournaments in both the United States and Canada.
Her father, Derek McGilligan, admitted the step up to Scottish league play took some adjustment to watch.
Canada, where hockey is a national obsession, now becomes the next chapter. The Prince Edward Island boarding school program will give Molly access to elite coaching and competition that simply does not exist back home in Northern Ireland, where the infrastructure for the sport remains thin.
