What is Your Happiness After Sports?

This past weekend I had the opportunity to help out with an organization called Black Girl Hockey Club Canada. If you are new here I am a 26 year old black female who grew up playing hockey and I created Happiness After Sports when my career ended.

After this experience I feel like my vision for this page is more clear. I want everyone to think about Happiness After Sports as more than just a space that is safe for people whose career is over and you are lost because this is most definitely for you and me. But I want to make sure that there are no more athletes who have to go through that phase. This is also for the athletes who are so in love and obsessed with the game they are currently playing. YOU need to remember that there is so much more to life than just your sport. What are you doing after or before your practice during the week that brings you an insurmountable amount of joy? What are you doing before or after your games every single weekend? What are you doing on the weekends that you don't have any games? I want you to be very intentional about how you spend your time outside of the rink, field or diamond. I want you to understand that you really can do whatever it is that you want to do and the possibilities are endless.

I will continue to post my adventures in hopes that it inspires some of you to get out and face your fears and try things that you could have never even imagine doing. One day I hope to be able to get groups of kids together from all different walks of life and show you how much there really is out there for you to enjoy so that when your career does come to an end, the transition phase into the "real world" is much more seamless than mine. I want you to be the best version of yourself from a younger age and explore every possible avenue of life that you want to.

For the first time since starting this movement I found my Happiness After Sports. I have been coaching since the end of my career and it was a pretty easy transition from playing to coaching but for the first time ever I felt as if what I was saying had some meaning, I felt comfortable and normal but most importantly I felt as if I was being heard as opposed for seen because of the way I look in a space that is all too familiar to me. I am on this journey of finding myself and things that I enjoy within spaces that allow me to be completely myself. I don't want whoever is reading this to have to wait as long as I did to put themselves in spaces. I encourage you to go out there and look for them. Black Girl Hockey Club was not a space intended for only hockey players. It was a space created by a fan of the game who just wanted to create a space for other black girls who looked just like her that enjoyed the game as much as she did without playing. It originally started in the United States and has now made its way to Canada. It truly is a movement and I want you to use that as inspiration in your own life.

The founder of Black Girl Hockey Club Canada is a girl by the name of Saroya Tinker, she is also a black female who grew up playing hockey in the city of Toronto. Saroya is an amazing role model for girls and women of all ages in sports and outside of sports so if you get a chance to check out her page please do. Her name is Saroya Tinker and her page is @blackgirlhockeyca.