Hockey Player Shares Prowess on the Ice

Chase Rutty embraces cultural diversity and challenges in hockey, inspiring younger players

Chase Rutty ’27, who plays defense on Sacred Heart University’s Pioneers women’s hockey team, has been busy the past two months skating with others from around the globe and teaching young athletes how to be masters of the ice.

As a member of the Caribbean Community Hockey program, at the end of May, Rutty took part in the Dream Nations Cup—an international invitational ice hockey tournament that celebrates the emergence of the sport in nontraditional hockey markets.

The first-seeded Caribbean team came in second place in the tournament, falling to Egypt in an intense overtime contest, but that didn’t dampen Rutty’s enthusiasm. “Of course, we wanted to win,” said Rutty, but she added that the heated battle to the end will live on as an incredible memory for her.

Rutty has been involved with Caribbean Community Hockey for the past two years, and it has been a whole new experience for her. “I’ve been the only Black player on my team the entire time I’ve been growing up,” she said. “That comes with a unique set of challenges and barriers you have to face.”

She continued, “When you’re able to play the sport you love with people who look like you and share your appreciation for your culture, it’s something special.” Members of the Caribbean team may live elsewhere but must have Caribbean heritage through their parents or grandparents. Rutty qualifies through her father’s parents, who are from Jamaica.

Rutty has also spent time this summer as part of hockey’s first all-Black female coaching staff as an assistant coach at Black Girl Hockey Club in Toronto, Canada, guiding players 12 and under. The position has made her well aware of the importance of being a mentor. “At that age, if you can see it, you can be it,” she said.

During training sessions, Rutty and the other coaches teach the young players on- and off-ice skills as well as nutritional eating habits and how to take care of their hair in a helmet. In addition, the coaches serve as role models. The players see the coaches who look like themselves playing pro hockey or Division I hockey and realize they can do that as well. “It makes all the difference,” Rutty said. “It makes them chase their dreams, and it’s incredible.”

As a student-athlete at SHU, “Chase represents Sacred Heart’s women’s hockey program at its very best on and off the ice,” said Thomas O’Malley, head coach of the women’s ice hockey team. “Rarely a day goes by when you don’t see Chase out on the ice working to perfect the skills and prowess of her game. I am so happy she is here with us at SHU.”

A psychology major, Rutty’s goal is to be a sports psychologist at the professional level.

Rutty fell in love with ice skating when she attended a friend’s skating party as a child. Her mother, imagining her daughter as a figure skater, signed her up for lessons. “I was a big tomboy at the time,” said Rutty. “I saw the figure skaters in their big skirts and tutus and wanted no part of that. But I loved to skate.”

At the end of her lessons, she had to test to go on into figure skating or ice hockey. “I didn’t even know what hockey was, but I didn’t want figure skating,” Rutty said. As it happened, her mother was working, so her father took her for the test, and she talked him into renting her hockey skates. She took the test and made the team. “Ever since then, it’s been all about hockey,” Rutty said.