William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles the Black Hockey Mommies, a support network of Black mothers whose sons and daughters play the sport.
The Black Hockey Mommies started as a club of two.
Rochelle Popyon and April Scott are two Northern California hockey moms who kept encountering each other at their sons’ games and tournaments, often being the only Black parents in the stands.
They created the Black Hockey Mommies Facebook page on Jan. 21, 2019 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — as a venue where mothers could celebrate and commiserate about the triumphs and challenges of having a son or daughter playing in a predominantly white sport.
“When we started, it was just her and I,” Scott said. “Every time I would go to a tournament, and I would see another Black family. I was like, ‘Hey, you on Facebook? Come join our group.'”
Popyon and Scott said they were happy when membership hit 25 and were amazed as the numbers kept growing.
“It was just word of mouth and then we got up to 100 people,” Scott said. “Then it was, like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute.'”
Today, the Black Hockey Mommies are 185 members strong, a support network of women who share the positive and negative experiences their children encounter on the ice or in the locker room and trade tips and suggestions related to hockey on and off the ice.
“I don’t see a lot of Black hockey moms, we’re few and far between,” said Meredith Lang, a Black Hockey Mommies member and co-founder of Minnesota Unbounded, a hockey program for girls of color. “For us to have a community that has continued to grow, and to try and navigate the system of hockey and what that brings, whether it’s dealing with racism in hockey or whether it’s coming to find out what the best equipment is. We can come to this group from A to Z and feel supported.”
And it’s a group where Black hockey moms dream, and work to make them come true. Popyon and Scott had long discussed the idea of forming an all-Black team to compete in an elite-level tournament.
“On the Facebook group, we just put the question out there: ‘We have an 18U tournament, we set up a tournament team, who’s in?'” Popyon said.
Based on the response, Popyon and Scott entered a team in the Minnesota Showcase Hockey Summer Showdown in Richfield, Minnesota, in June.
The roster came together slowly, starting with Popyon’s and Scott’s 16-year-old sons, defenseman Gibran Popyon II and forward Leon Garrett III. The moms recruited 15 other players from eight states from California to New York to compete in the tournament. The Panthers were born.
Popyon and Scott even recruited an all-Black coaching staff led by Mike Weekley, a Los Angeles area high school and youth hockey coach. Anthony Walsh, who was a forward on the Edina High School hockey team that won Minnesota’s 2013 Class 2A championship, and Gibran Popyon Sr. were his assistants.
“For them to get together and maintain a support system that was meant for positive things for their kids and to have that manifest into this idea of ’Let’s just get a team of young brothers together and get a coach,’ that’s not easy,” Weekley said. “There are a lot of Black people who play hockey, but to find them, to be age-appropriate, skill-appropriate, and then find the coaching staff to do it? That says a lot about those mothers and how deeply connected they are. “
They had a key Minnesota connection in Lang, who was a finalist for the 2022 Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award.
She helped book ice time for the Panthers, connected them with a jersey maker and helped arrange a tour of the Minnesota Wild’s facilities.
“For them to be able to grab players from all over the country and bring them to Minnesota for the tournament, I just wanted it to be something that they were never able to forget,” Lang said.
The Panthers went 1-2-1 in the tournament. But the players and coaches came away winners from the valuable bonding experience.
“From Day One when we got there, you would think that these kids knew each other for years,” Scott said. “They just bonded. It was awesome.”
After organizing their first tournament team, Popyon and Scott said the Black Hockey Mommies are already planning on doing it again.
“We want to grow the Black Hockey Mommies group and also grow the Panthers,” Popyon said. “If we can have more tournament teams out there in the future, it may not be the near future, and definitely have more divisions for the Panther team, I know that all levels would benefit from the experience such as we had in Minnesota.”
Photos: Cyndi Nightengale Photography
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