Harrison Browne: The Trailblazer

The sport of hockey has for long been seen as exclusive in nature and limited in expression. However, there has been a shift in the culture of the sport that has made it more inclusive. The growth of women's hockey in North America specifically has been unprecedented in sports. In 1990-91 Hockey Canada had 8,146 registered female athletes. Compare that to 2009-10 where the number of registered female athletes rose to 85,624. One of those athletes was Harrison Browne, a hockey player in the NWHL (National Women's Hockey League) for the Buffalo Beauts.

Harrison grew up in Oakville, Ontario and for most of his life identified as a girl. Going through school and later girls hockey, he revealed to many of his peers that he was gay. Although it was at first difficult to deal with from his classmates at his all girls elementary school, people were understanding of Harrison and understood that he had the right to express himself freely. In hockey Harrison felt free from constraint and was able to channel whatever challenges he faced in the real world onto the ice. While at College, playing hockey for the University of Maine, Harrison expressed that he did not feel comfortable identifying as female. He felt he was living a lie to be identifying as female and found it much more comfortable identifying as male. And so, Harrison (Formerly Hailey) began his journey as the first openly trans professional athlete.

Harrison was a part of a family when playing for Buffalo, who cared not about how he identified and preferred to focus on winning hockey games and having fun with one another. After winning their league Harrison announced that he would be pursuing top surgery. Such a surgery would make Harrison ineligible to play professional women's sports, a dream he had been chasing since a young age, but he he felt was the right decision. And so, on March 14, 2017, at the age of 23 Harrison announced retirement from women's professional sports.`