For 16 transgender players, a weekend to just belong

Brynn CA MBRIDGE,

Toohey paced alongside the ice at the Simoni Skating Rink, pushing a golf ball back and forth with her stick. “I want to score a bunch of goals,” she said.

From the time she could walk, Toohey, 29, had played hockey. Her grandmother used to steal traffic cones off the street so Toohey could do drills. But after college, she stepped away from the sport, trying to figure out who she was. She drank too much. Publicly, she still lived as a man.

“I was trying to drink it away,” Toohey said. “Oh yeah, I’ll just deal with this later.”

About a year ago, she decided she couldn’t live that way anymore. On New Year’s Eve, she came out for the first time as a transgender woman.

Two months ago, she picked up a hockey stick again, for the first time in seven years.

“If I didn’t have an outlet, the transition would be a little bit too much for me,” she said. “Now I’m dealing with it. I’m having fun. I’m finding my place in the world.”

Toohey is a forward for Team Trans, a group of transgender and nonbinary hockey players. They assembled for the first time Nov. 8 for a practice in Cambridge. Less than 24 hours later they returned to the ice for the first of two games against Boston Pride, an LGBTQ hockey team that has been around since the early 1990s.

Team Trans is believed to be the first entirely transgender sports team in the United States. There is at least one other in the world — a transgender men’s soccer team in Brazil.

Trans women, trans men and nonbinary people are all welcome on the team, regardless of where they are in their transition.

Some have undergone hormone treatment and surgeries.

Most, but not all, have come out publicly. One still uses his female birth name at work.

One weekend could not change the world outside the Simoni rink, or make it easier for members of Team Trans to be welcomed by squads near their homes and to compete regularly.

But for two games, they could feel unequivocally accepted, without any question that they belonged.

They did not have to explain themselves. They did not have to worry about which locker room to use, which is often a source of contention. They all used the same one.

“As soon as you put the jersey on, nothing underneath it matters,” said Alexander LeFebvre, 25, the goalie for Team Trans. “You are just a hockey player.”