Being allergic to every grass and plant surprisingly isn’t what motivated freshman forward Megan Mroczek to pick a sport that is played indoors on ice.
“I started to play hockey because my brother was playing, and when your brother plays you want to play, too,” Mroczek said. “It’s funny because he’s my younger brother and normally you try to be like the older one. Normally I leave that part out of the story and let people think he’s younger than me.
"The year we started playing I wore number nine because he was nine-years-old and he wore number 12 because I was 12 years old.”
The season she started playing was the 2012-13 season, when the Chicago Blackhawks won their second cup in three years. Their win was enough to motivate Mroczek’s younger brother to want to pursue ice hockey, which then in-turn motivated Megan. Two years later in 2015 they would get to see their team raise the cup once again, now knowing what it meant to be on the ice.
Have to get your start somewhere
The Blackhawks were the team that inspired the siblings to play, but Mroczek would take inspiration from the Arizona Coyotes’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson for her jersey number.
“I used to play defense my first two years,” Mroczek said. “I was so completely terrified to play forward and I don’t know why. But after two years I was on a new team and everyone was playing defense. My coach asked me ‘Megan what position do you play?’, and I said I played defense.
"He looked at me and said, ‘Nope, you’re playing center.’ That was a shock for me but I liked Ekman-Larsson and so picking number 23 was a way for me to keep some defense.”
Megan still doesn’t know why she was so scared to play a forward position, especially since she now claims that she is terrible at defense. But she does remember contemplating playing the position when she first started.
Her teammates know her for being upbeat and energetic on the ice, so it’s hard for them to imagine her down on herself and not enjoying the sport.
However, that is exactly how she was at the end of last hockey season.
An end or a beginning
The end of high school could very well have also marked the end of Mroczek’s hockey career. That came very close to being the case.
“My last two years on the Lady Coyotes were really rough,” Mroczek said. “I was an 18-year-old playing with girls who were 14. When I first started the team it was my freshman year, I was changing positions and I was named alternate captain.
"Those last two years it was really hard for me to be that someone for those girls. I wasn’t ready — I still wanted to learn from someone older than me and that wasn’t possible.”
This is what made it hard for Mroczek to play with the same passion and drive she had in the previous years. The work ethic that had made her so successful. The age gap on the team was just too wide. At one point, her car was older than some of the girls on the team.
Mroczek cared for all of the younger girls. She cared for them like sisters. That’s what made it even more difficult to transition into the role model position.
“I tried my best you know? I really tried my best,” Mroczek said. “I was captain my senior year, and assistant captain the three years before that."
This experience of her last year of high school left such a bad taste in her mouth that Mrozcek didn’t even want to play hockey anymore.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in the end,” Mroczek said. “School always comes first, that’s the way it is. Sometimes trying to fit hockey into that is hard. It gets you down and gets you thinking that you’re not good enough.”
#12 Rawls and #23 Mroczek scored their 1st collegiate goals as Sun Devils this weekend.
— ASU Women's Hockey (@ASUWomensHockey) October 9, 2016
But there were two people who turned it all around. Two people who just so happen to be on ASU’s women’s hockey team this season.
First is assistant coach Matt Shott, who was Mroczek’s coach her senior year with the Lady Coyotes.
“Megan had a rough year last year,” Shott said. “She’s a great girl, one of the nicest individuals I’ve ever met. I hated seeing it.
"She loved that team, she put her all in and wore her heart on her sleeve. The way her youth hockey career was going to end for her, I couldn’t see her go out that way.”
In fact, it was coach Shott telling Mroczek that she could have a spot on the team that made her consider ASU women’s hockey as a possibility.
“I told her that coming here she’d have the opportunity to be a part of something special,” Shott said. “This program is going to be special. She’s not necessarily the face of the program, but she was our first four-year commitment. I’m glad to be able to continue to coach her.”
A new team for Mroczek means the chance to have new role models — to find someone knew to push herself to be as good as she can. Mroczek also displays leadership more comfortably than she did in the past. Both coaches think she is much more capable of being in the position of a role model than she thinks.
“Everyone on the team is a leader in a way,” head coach Lindsey Ellis said. “But because people around here know Megan, she’s going to be a bit of a bigger role model. There’s already Lady Coyotes talking to us who want to be in her shoes. She’s going to play a big role for all of those west coast girls who want to come here.”
The second person who made Mroczek feel confident in returning to the ice was her captain: KC McGinley.
“Matt told me that KC was playing for the team,” Mroczek said. “I had met KC before and she was just the coolest person you could ever meet. Honestly, she’s so bad-ass.
"She’s become that role model that I always wanted for hockey.”
Shott had seen that Mroczek had needed a role model and he found her one. He told McGinley to look out for Mroczek and that’s what she’s done. The two teammates have already bonded deeply since the beginning of the season.
Together, Shott and McGinley were there for Mroczek when she needed it most. They did something for her that is invaluable. They helped her restore her love for hockey.
The start of something
Mroczek now gets a chance that not many people get in life. She gets to start over but she also gets to lay the foundation for girls just like her.
As one of only a few freshmen, with the ability to play for the team all four years, Mroczek has the chance to have KC and the other players as her role models. She also has the opportunity to transition into the role she’s been striving to confidently hold.
“I want to be a role model to younger girls,” Mroczek said. "Looking back at the Lady Coyotes, I hope that what I did there was enough."
And even though her time has ended with the Lady Coyotes, Mroczek has achieved something simply by being on the inaugural team of ASU women’s hockey. She’s proven that they can make it. She’s left them with what she’s always wanted: something to strive toward.
Now she has to focus on the year ahead of her and enjoying hockey again — freely and with a whole team of role models alongside her.
“I’m so, so grateful that I decided to keep playing. Now that I’m here, I would be so sad to not be,” Mroczek said. “Just having a team, and working out with them and having those people there for you. It’s just great. It’s what I needed.”
Reach the reporter at tsclark5@asu.edu or follow @taylorsedona on Twitter.
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