Sidney Crosby is the male equivalent of Brianna. I’ve been at Shattuck-St. Mary’s long enough to have seen both come through our program. If you never got the chance to watch Brianna play, Sidney offers the closest comparison: The compact, explosive, powerful skating style. The dogged, relentless pursuit of the puck. The silky hands for passing and handling around the net and the heavy, quick-release, accurate shot. She was a leader not through words, but through authentic, consistent, pure competitive action.
Brianna is among the most competitive people I’ve ever met. Her consistency from game-to-game as a leader and force on her teams, to her ability to make clutch plays and score big goals, was remarkable. Growing up with three brothers, competition was simply part of her life. She loves to compete, and she does so with the toughness she learned in rough-and-tumble backyard games, where her brothers expected her to keep up and her parents warned that if she came inside crying, she couldn’t play with the boys.
I’ve rarely seen another athlete whom competitors respect to the point of reverence, because they know she’ll push them to get better. Brianna elevates everyone around her, both teammates and opponents alike.
Everyone knows the intensity of the rivalry between the Canadian and American women’s national teams. During one stretch, Brianna purposely moved to Calgary to play in the CWHL with some of her fiercest Canadian rivals. She wanted to be challenged by the best and they welcomed her not just as a teammate but because they knew she’d make them better, too. And in true Brianna fashion, when those Calgary teammates became rivals again on Team Canada, she gave no quarter and expected none in return.
To me, that’s the essence of true competitive spirit. Elite athletes share another key strength of character. While they don’t need others to push them, their sport is as much who they are as what they do. They attract players who believe training alongside them will elevate their own game. Brianna had that magnetic pull. Her teammates had to raise their level to keep up and her opponents knew they had to do the same.
Now, having gotten to know her as an adult — we coach together at Shattuck-St. Mary’s — I’ve seen even more layers. She’s hilarious with a quick wit, a sharp eye for human quirks, and an endless appetite for practical jokes. Spend any time around her and expect to laugh.
At the same time, she’s a devoted student of the game and a natural teacher. Many elite players struggle to communicate as coaches because their player mindset was so wired for individual excellence, a kind of necessary selfishness, laser-focused on getting better.
There’s a cliché in hockey that you don’t coach the game, you coach kids. Brianna lives that truth. She stays connected in her coaching to the girl who arrived at Shattuck all those years ago, driven by nothing more than a passion to lift the next generation.
At the end of the day, that’s the true mark of a champion: Wanting to influence everything you touch and everyone you’ve been around, better.
