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 Mariya Rauf, a Yale University junior forward who coached a first-ever women’s team representing Pakistan to a bronze medal at the 2025 Amerigol LATAM Cup.
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — Juwairyah Khalid felt sad when she heard her daughter, Zoya Quraishi, lament about the lack of players who look like her in women’s hockey.
“She was like, ‘Oh, I’m a girl, there’s no good girls in hockey, I have nobody to look up to,’” Khalid said. “So then I Googled ‘Pakistani,’ ‘South Asian,’ ‘Women of color in hockey’ and lo and behold, I found Mariya.”
Khalid found a role model for her 12-year-old daughter in Mariya Rauf, a junior forward for Yale University’s NCAA Division I women’s hockey team. She shared videos of Rauf’s games with Zoya and upon learning that Rauf lived nearby in Northern Virgina, arranged a skate with her daughter at a local rink.
“She’s an inspiration,” Khalid said. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am.”
So is Pakistan’s first-ever women’s hockey team. Rauf coached the team, including Zoya, that won a women’s Division II bronze medal on Wednesday in its first appearance at the Amerigol LATAM Cup. For the 19-year-old from Brambleton, Virginia, coaching the team helps her goal of encouraging more Pakistani girls and women to play hockey.
The tournament that ended on Sunday featured 62 women’s, men’s and youth teams (with four more exhibition teams) and more than 1,450 players representing 17 countries and territories, including Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico.