Laila Edwards: Black USA Hockey Player

Laila Edwards was born January 25, 2004, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, into a busy, competitive, faith‑filled household. Her parents, Charone Gray‑Edwards and Robert Edwards, raised five children who turned their home into a training ground—rollerblades on the floors, sticks in the hallway, pucks off the walls. Laila, the youngest, was often thrown in goal, then grew into a towering 6'1" skater with reach, power, and vision that could not be ignored.

She started on the ice as a figure skater around age three, then shifted to hockey a few years later. Very early, she stepped into a world where almost no one looked like her. Hockey was—and still is—overwhelmingly white. Laila played boys’ hockey with the Cleveland Jr. Lumberjacks and Cleveland Barons, then with the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite gi ...