Olympian launches effort to fund Arizona youth hockey
Arizona Kachinas president and cofounder Lyndsey Fry is going to make sure that youth hockey in Arizona won’t feel the effects of the sale and relocation of the Coyotes.
On Thursday, Fry established the Matt Shott Arizona Hockey Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit that honors the former Coyotes director of hockey development, who died in December 2021. The goal of the foundation is to support all youth hockey programs for boys and girls at every level across the Phoenix metropolitan area.
“One of the reasons I had to make sure Matt’s name was included was because he was the one who spearheaded a lot of this programming. It’s very important to me and others that we protect what he created,” Fry said.
Without the Coyotes, Arizona loses a significant amount of financial backing that the NHL provided. When the NHL was in Arizona, the league contributed about $500,000 annually to youth hockey through the industry growth fund (IGF).
Through the NHL, the Coyotes got sticks in hands of kids at schools through street hockey and a P.E. curriculum in Maricopa County. The Learn-To-Play program significantly reduced the price of the costly sport to $250.
Fry said she’s unsure of whether the IGF will continue and through the unknown, she’s seen this foundation as something that could be a certainty. And if everything does go to plan with the NHL returning via expansion, the foundation would add to that.
“This just seemed like the right way to do it and the amount of people who have been reaching out, it’s been incredibly validating. People are excited to be apart of this,” Fry said.
The 501c3 non-profit status is in process, but the foundation will start taking donations in May. The foundation will start with grant opportunities and programming.
“The Matt Shott Arizona Hockey Legacy Foundation is a non-profit organization designed to operate grassroots programming and offer grants that would support all rinks and programs in
Arizona,” a foundation press release said. “Shott’s name hangs in every rink in the Valley because of the selfless dedication he gave for over a decade to grow hockey in Arizona. The foundation aims to build a $10 million endowment over the next five to 10 years.”
Fry, Arizona’s first Olympian in ice hockey and the first athlete from Arizona to win a medal in the Winter Olympics, has long been a champion for hockey in Arizona. The Chandler native was one of only a few girls playing hockey soon after the beginning of the millennium. She had to move to Colorado in her teens to find girls’ teams and eventually earned a scholarship at Harvard.
After playing in college and at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Fry ran youth hockey camps when the Coyotes approached her. She joined the organization initially as a special advisor to then team president Ahron Cohen, as well as a brand ambassador for the team in 2018, but later transitioned as the director of External Engagement & Female Hockey.
Alongside Shott, she helped create the Kachinas in 2019, the all-girls hockey program she never had growing up.
Without the financial backing it once had, Fry collaborated with several influential people in hockey to keep those programs going. She is joined by in the foundation by former Coyotes Jason Demers, Greg Adams, Darcy Hordichuk and Michael Grabner. She has also enlisted numerous business and community leaders, including Carly Accardo, mother of the late Leighton Accardo, and Shott’s mother, Shelley, and brother, Trevor.
Even though it was abrupt with how quickly the Coyotes’ sale unfolded, gathering the group wasn’t a hard sell.
“The beauty is that it really wasn’t that difficult. There are so many people that care deeply about the success of hockey in Arizona,” Fry said. “I think that’s been the biggest fear for everybody. The players are going to be fine, the coaches and staff are going to be fine. It’s what happens to everything that’s left behind. When you really evaluate the impact of having the NHL here has had over the last almost three decades, the numbers speak for themselves as far as growth in the youth game and adult game. That’s ultimately what feeds all of our rinks and the entire ecosystem.”