Haley Winn’s climb to hockey’s zenith inspired by a devoted, loving family

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This remarkable journey from a backyard rink to the peak of women’s hockey began before Haley Winn could even walk, let alone skate. Parents Mike and Janet Winn remember how little Haley would crawl to the drying rack in the laundry room, and begin putting on the hockey pads and jerseys of her older brothers.

“It was like dress-up,” Mike said, chuckling. “So, that’s kind of where this all started.”

By age two, Haley was wearing skates and pushing a bucket for support around the Winn’s rink at their old homestead in Williamson, about a 30-minute drive east of Rochester. And a year or two after that, she began playing games with and against big bros Casey, Ryan and Tommy, who were seven, six and three years her elder, respectively.

“We were watching some home videos from those days recently and there were several scenes where I was getting cross-checked into a snow bank,” she said. “They treated me like they treated each other. They were pretty rough on me, and I’m happy they were. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

The tenacity they instilled served her well, helping her become a highly coveted defenseman with the prestigious Bishop Kearney Selects high school team; a two-time All-American at Clarkson University; a two-time gold-medalist in world championship tournaments, and a member of the USA Women’s Olympic hockey team that will compete in the Winter Games in Italy next February. And Tuesday evening in Ottawa, Winn achieved another impressive milestone when she realized a dream she never thought possible until recent years – the dream of becoming a pro hockey player.

“It’s all kind of surreal,” she said just before the Boston Fleet selected her with the second pick of the 2025 Professional Women’s Hockey League draft. “It certainly wasn’t something I fantasized about when I was younger because there hadn’t been a sustainable professional women’s hockey league. It wasn’t until I was in college that I saw there might be this opportunity for me. To know that I can making a living doing what I love is super cool.”

Tuesday night’s festivities were all the more special because Winn’s parents and brothers were there to cheer her on, just as they have been since she was knee-high to a hockey stick.

“It’s not just about me,” she said. “It’s about them, too. This definitely is a family affair. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. I feel truly blessed.”

The seed for all this was planted in the early 1990s during Mike Winn’s undergraduate days at Clarkson. Although he played baseball rather than hockey in college, he developed a passion for pucks while in the North Country, and he passed on that love to his children when they were quite young.

“I flooded a rink every winter when it got cold enough,” recalled Mike, a longtime software engineer. “It was a good way to break up the winter, and all of the kids really took to it and the game of hockey.”

Each of them would go on to play college hockey — Casey at SUNY Brockport, Ryan at Bowdoin College (where he also played baseball), Tommy at SUNY Geneseo, and Haley at Clarkson. Interestingly, they all became defensemen.

“Haley originally was a forward, but there was a game in Buffalo against this really fast-skating team when she came racing back from the front line and swiped the puck away from this kid who was zooming toward our goal,” Janet said. “I thought to myself, ‘I bet you they are going to switch her to defense because she’s such a good skater and has such a good feel for anticipating things.’ Sure enough, she comes home from practice the next day and is all excited because the coach wants her to play defense, just like her brothers. She was about six at the time, and she was ecstatic.”

Playing against her brothers and on all-boys teams hastened her development, as did the coaching she received, including a stint playing for Rochester Americans Hall-of-Famer Scott Nichol.      “She had the good fortune to skate for some really knowledgeable hockey coaches, who knew the game inside and out, and who welcomed her as the only girl on the team,” Mike said. “They really nurtured her love of the game and admired her competitiveness and drive.”

Haley’s hockey career took off after joining the Bishop Kearney Selects, an internationally renowned scholastic program based in Rochester. While at the Academy, she roomed with players from 18 different states and two foreign countries, and flourished under the coaching of Brent Hill. Her skills as a defenseman who could also stick-handle and score attracted the attention of Team USA hockey officials and scores of college recruiters.

Clarkson wound up being the perfect college for her. While earning a degree in psychology, she established herself as one of the best players in the land. Saving her best for last, Haley enjoyed a superb senior year, earning ECAC Player-of-the-Year and Defender-of-the-Year honors, after accumulating 14 goals and 32 assists and leading the team in blocked shots. Her drive to be the best was legendary, and included a mind-boggling 35,000 practice shots on the RapidShot machine inside Clarkson’s training facility her freshman year.

“Haley’s always been extremely internally driven,” Mike said. “She never was someone who had to be pushed; she pushed herself.”

Her college achievements, along with her gold medal exploits for USA teams in international championships, set her up for Tuesday night’s lofty PWHL draft selection. Fittingly, her family was there to celebrate, including the three brothers who thought nothing of planting their little sister into those snow banks surrounding the family rink.

“I’ve always looked up to them,” she said. “I aspired to be like them.”

She accomplished that mission — and then some. Now, it’s her brothers who are looking up to her.

Best-selling author and nationally honored journalist Scott Pitoniak is the Rochester Business Journal’s sports columnist.