Betsy Hoody is an independent consultant who has spent her career working in philanthropy on women's rights and feminist organizing. She lives in south Minneapolis where she coaches girls hockey, plays hockey, and is always in search of a good sauna.
Ever since last week, I’ve been haunted by the laughter of some of men’s hockey’s greatest players.
On Sunday, after winning the first gold medal in men’s hockey since 1980, the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team took a call from President Trump, while also (for some odd reason) enjoying a few cold ones with FBI Director Kash Patel. After inviting the players to attend the State of the Union, Trump went on: "We’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that? I do believe that I would probably be impeached [if the women’s team was not invited]."
A couple of men can be heard shouting a genuine “absolutely” and “2-for-2 ” in the background. But the resounding sound in the locker room is laughter.
It’s impossible for me to know what went through each player’s head in that moment, what calculation they were making as they talked to the most powerful man in the world, or, as some have offered as a subpar excuse, how many beers they had already consumed.
What I do know is what I heard in that laughter. What I felt as a women’s hockey player and coach of an 8U girls hockey team. As a feminist who has spent 20 years organizing against sexual violence and harmful gender norms. As a Minnesotan mom, who has spent the last two-and-a-half months responding to the chaos and fear sown by federal agents in my state at the behest of President Trump.
I heard first the echoes of laughter that chased me and my teammates when we started playing hockey in the 1990s, on the very first girls teams in my northern Minnesotan hometown. "Girls can’t play hockey," my boy classmates shouted on the playground. "You can’t even check," they’d laugh, ignoring the fact that in fifth grade, the age I started playing, neither boys nor girls are allowed to check in ice hockey.
Even adults laughed at us, dumbfounded by the ways our girlhood showed up on the ice. I remember hearing jokes about the smell of perfume that wafted out of our locker rooms. About the music we listened to before games. "Well, that’s a different way to get pumped up," they’d say, chuckling. Everything that was different from a boys team was noted aloud.
When I heard those Team USA players laughing, I couldn’t help but think of all the voices that laughed at us. That didn’t take us seriously. That always measured us against boys hockey players. We were never fast or physical enough. Never mind that our boy agemates had started playing six years before us, in a program that had been around for decades, not weeks.
I internalized these messages. While joyful and transformative, my youth hockey experience was also a never-ending journey of proving myself. My worth. My right to take up space on the ice.
By virtually every measure, women’s and girls’ hockey has traveled light years over the three decades since I first put on skates. We’ve developed youth programs across the country. The U.S. Women’s National Team has won three gold medals and 13 world championships. In 2024, the Professional Women’s Hockey League debuted, standing on the shoulders of several generations of women’s hockey players’ efforts to find a viable home for professional players. Over the past two seasons, the PWHL has broken and rebroken every attendance record in the books.
When I go to the rink to coach today, the laughter that I hear comes from the girls as they take to the ice each weekend. They come to the ice with an abundance of joy and confidence. My daughter, upon hearing a story of my first days playing hockey, says to her friends with disbelief, "A long long time ago, when my mom was little, people used to think that girls couldn’t play hockey!" A friend’s daughter, who is growing up steeped in the high school girls’ team that her mom coaches, once asked her, "Can boys play hockey, too?"
These girls aren’t seeking permission from men or boys. They know they belong on the ice. They see it in the role models before them, most notably the 23 members of the Team USA women’s gold medalist hockey team.
The laughter of Team USA’s men’s hockey team doesn’t belong in their locker room or in this world. We don’t need the echoes from 30 years ago haunting the world’s best players today, nor the superstars of the future that are just learning to skate.
I heard more than just women’s hockey in that laughter though—and in the silence that immediately followed it. I hear the sounds of complicity, a sound that seems to follow in Donald Trump’s footsteps. I heard echoes of Billy Bush’s laughter in the Access Hollywood video, when Donald Trump asserts that his fame allows him to grab women by the pussy. The laughter that seems to come so easily, even if uncomfortably, when a man of power asks other men to perform toxic masculinity. How quickly our humanity is traded for the comfort of men conversing in a room together.
Even when watching the replay of the video, my body braced for the gaslighting that always follows: It was just a joke. Let it go. This is why people don’t like feminists.
Three gold medals in less than 30 years is not a joke. Hilary Knight’s record-breaking goal to tie the gold medal game with two minutes left in regulation is not a joke. Athletes who arguably just put out the best women’s hockey performance of all time over the last two weeks is not a joke. "We are not here for your amusement," I want to scream.
As a mom in Minneapolis who’s spent the last two and a half months shuttling groceries and essential supplies to immigrant families in hiding, I can’t help but mention what I felt in seeing particular players on the call with the president, namely Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, and Quinn Hughes of the Minnesota Wild.
It was their laughter that chilled me to the bone. How quickly the yes's rolled off tongues when the president invited them to attend the State of the Union. The same president who oversaw a federal occupation of Minnesota that killed two civilian observers in January, detained thousands of individuals, and brought terror, fear, and chaos to our city streets. As Team USA men’s hockey players were RSVPing to the State of the Union on Sunday morning, my neighbors and I were busy organizing food drop-offs and school pickups for immigrant families—our 2026 version of Sunday scaries.
I don’t know what they were thinking. I don’t believe every athlete needs to make a political statement about every issue. But I also reject the idea that these are just athletes playing sports. Fascist authoritarians have a long history of using sports to promote a nationalist ideology and cult of leaders. Donald Trump didn’t call just because he loved the hockey game. He called because he saw a masculine win on the ice that he thought he could benefit from. It doesn’t matter what medal they had just won, Team USA men’s hockey got played by Donald Trump.
Something else, though, has been echoing in my head alongside the laughter. The lines to a song I learned from Singing Resistance in the past month:
It’s OK to change your mind
Show us your courage
Leave this behind
It’s OK to change your mind
And you can join us any time.
I’m ready for any of the members of Team USA men’s hockey to show their courage. Make a statement about how much they love and respect the women’s players and apologize for the hurt caused by their laughter. Name how much they care about immigrant communities in the town where they play professional hockey. Speak with their own voices about what they feel and think.
Until then, we’re left to read between the lines of laughter and silence.
