Born to Skate

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY NATHALIE HEIBERG-HARRISON

Davina McLeod can’t even remember learning how to skate, or lacing up for the first time. As far as she knows, she’s been doing it her whole life. Her mother, Mina McLeod, remembers it a bit differently.

“She must have been four or five when she first started going to public skating, and she couldn’t wait to start playing hockey,” Mina remembers. “Right from the start she wanted to play hockey. She was excited to play all the time. She was raring to go.”

As soon as Davina was old enough, she started playing minor hockey at the Sittichinli Complex in Aklavik. For extra practice she would jump on the ice with her older brother, David. Because he was a year and a half older, she was always one step behind him, which pushed her to skate faster, fight harder for the puck, and play aggressively – all trademarks she is known for today.

Davina may have been an underdog, growing her skills in her hometown of Aklavik, but she didn’t let that stop her. Soon enough, she was attending her first Gwich’in Cup in Inuvik and proving that she had the talent to rival her peers from across the Mackenzie Delta. “She must have been about nine or 10 years old,” remembers Mina. “She won the fastest skater competition. Out of everyone, including the boys, she was the fastest skater. I could tell right away that she was going to play hockey all of her life.”

Davina kept pushing herself to get better and better and looked forward to the times that John Chabot, a retired NHL player, visited Aklavik to put on clinics for the community’s youth. Her next big challenge was taking on players from across the North in 2010. “As soon as she was old enough to play in Whitehorse she played at the [annual Yukon Native Hockey Tournament]. You could notice her on the ice. Everyone would be saying, ‘Who’s that girl?’”

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The highlight of Davina’s hockey career came in 2016 when she captained Team NWT hockey to a gold ulu at the Arctic Winter Games, but she would have to journey through the Yukon, Alberta and Ontario to get there.

In Grade 10, at the age of 14, Davina moved away from Aklavik – and her parents – to study and play hockey in Whitehorse. She moved in with her older sister, Karlyn, and played for her first all-female team, the Mustangs, while attending Porter Creek Secondary School. Mina says that her daughter’s move to the Yukon gave way to her biggest developments both on and off the ice. “When I left her there I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ But I’m glad that I did,” she explains. “She played hockey every day, had dry land practice, and went to tournaments.” It was also a significant change for Davina in that for the first time she wasn’t playing with her older brother or the other boys in Aklavik, but with girls her own age. “It’s definitely a different environment. I think the biggest thing for me was just the encouragement you get from girls. When something goes wrong, playing with guys, it’s just a lot of putting blame on other people and a lot of frustration. Playing with girls, everyone is so encouraging and you just learn from your mistakes in a better environment,” she says.

Davina attended Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a Saskatchewan boarding school known for its hockey, for the first semester of Grade 11. Once the season was finished, she returned to Porter Creek for her second semester. After being spotted by a scout at the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships in Halifax, she was offered a spot at the Hockey Training Institute in Mulmur, Ontario for the 2015-2016 season. Playing for the HTI Stars was no small feat. The travel team competes in Intermediate AA, the highest level of under-20 women’s hockey in North America, and regularly plays against teams in the United States. The training institute is also unique, as students eat, breathe and play hockey, and complete their high school courses online with the help of tutors. They stay in dorms, work out at a gym just down the hall, and are put on the radar of hockey scouts across the country. “It was kind of surreal, but I’m almost used to it at this point,” Davina explains. “I haven’t stayed in one place for a long amount of time since I was in Grade 9. It was scary, but at the same time I felt ready for it.” After the hockey season had wrapped, Davina returned to Whitehorse, living on her own and attending F.H. Collins Secondary School for her last semester of Grade 12.

Through all of this, Davina was also travelling the country to compete in national tournaments. She first played for Team NWT at the 2012 Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse, and later at the 2014 games in Fairbanks, Alaska. She represented Team North at the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships in 2011 and has played with the team ever since, competing in Saskatchewan, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Ontario. The culmination of all her hard work came at the 2016 Arctic Winter Games, where Davina and her teammates battled Alberta North in the finals to win gold. “It was the first time we’ve ever won a gold ulu, and to be able to captain the team was really special to me,” she says. “For my first two years (on Team NWT) we honestly weren’t even contenders. It was just amazing to make that happen.”

“We had a mission from day one that we were going to go there and do the best we could,” says Team North coach John Hill. “Davina and the older girls, they played their hearts out and left everything on the ice.” Although it was John’s first time coaching Davina, he first saw her play in 2012 when she was trying out for the Arctic Winter Games alongside his daughter Bryn. He recognized Davina’s skill right away and has seen her grow as a centre and winger ever since. “She’s very deceiving with the puck. You think she’s going to go one way and all of a sudden she’s spun around and gone back the other way. It’s very sneaky, unexpected moves. She’s a very good stick handler. She does a lot of uncommon things that work very well for her. She seems to twist and turn and do things with the puck that a lot of other players can’t do,” he explains. “The sky’s the limit for her. She’s a great listener and a good learner. She’ll go places.”

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After graduating from F.H. Collins Secondary School in 2016, Davina enrolled in Business Administration at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton. Eager to play hockey, she attended tryouts for the Ooks, the school’s team that competes in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference. “She showed up at my door back in September and asked what the process was to try out for the women’s hockey team,” remembers head coach Deanna Martin. “Do they always make it, or have the impact that Davina had? Not always.”

Deanna says that Davina fit into the team right away, and has welcomed her back for a second season. “She’s funny. She’s got a great sense of humour,” she says. “She’s coachable in that she wants to get better. She wants to work hard. She’s very purposeful in what she does. She’s focused. She doesn’t waste a lot of time. She comes out on the ice, and she’s there to get better. She gets to work right away.” The team is made up of girls from across Western Canada, and Deanna admits it’s not often that a northerner is part of the mix. Being a member of the Ooks hockey team is no small commitment – players practice Monday through Thursday, have two games and two off-ice training sessions per week, in addition to a sports psychology seminar, video training session or opponent breakdown meeting. Over the summer they are expected to take part in a training program with the school’s strength and conditioning coach, either on campus or back home. Davina’s biggest success with the Ooks came in their final playoff game. They were down 3-0 at the start of the game, but in the third period she scored a breakaway goal to make the game 4-3. (They ended up losing 5-4 in overtime.) “She’s just so dedicated to the process and the team. You just had this feeling she was going to score,” Deanna says.

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Mina knows that her daughter has been lucky. Not every athlete in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region gets to realize their potential, and Davina benefitted from a lot of support. Her father Dave was able to help financially, her sister Karlyn looked after her in Whitehorse, driving her to early morning practices, and her brother David acted as a role model and competitor on the ice. Her 8-year-old brother Kendyn is her biggest fan, and counts down the days until she back in Aklavik. Her aunt Joyce Blake has encouraged and supported her, Darius Elias has coached her since she was 12, and her grandparents – Margo and Eddy McLeod, and Lorna and Billy Storr – have cheered her on. “I cried for her, and I missed her, but then watching her come back and just watching her grow better as a player and watching her become more independent, that makes it worth it,” Mina says. “She’s been living on her own since she was 15. I think all of it has helped her to be more independent and responsible.”

“I would not have been able to do a lot of the things that I’ve gotten to do if it wasn’t for hockey,” Davina says. “There’s so much purpose behind it. It’s kept me on track and it’s kept me grounded. I really encourage young Inuvialuit girls to pursue hockey and keep playing.”

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Davina competed in her seventh and final National Aboriginal Hockey Championships in May 2017 in Mississauga.