CLEVELAND — A hockey player from Ohio is getting the opportunity to play at the professional level.

On a summer day in northeast Ohio, Morgan Schauer isn’t taking a break this offseason.

“It’s definitely a little bit different. Like, you get to change it up from just the standard hockey lifts and everything. Obviously, the on-ice training will intensify when I go back,” said Schauer.  

The 22-year-old plays hockey, a sport she loves and wants to continue getting better at it. 

“The speed, the creativity, just like the chemistry you can build with your teammates when you’re playing the game right. It’s really exciting and it’s something you don’t necessarily see in some other sports,” she said. 

That love for the sport started at the age of four when her mother, Peggy, and the family took her to a hockey game. 

“The two teams apparently didn’t like each other and within the first five minutes there was a fight on the ice with blood, and she moved herself into the aisle because she thought that was pretty cool to see and one of the players flipped her a puck, and from that moment on, all she talked about was she wanted to play hockey,” said Peggy.  

Morgan would spend a lot of time in cars for the next two decades traveling around the state and country for practice and games. Due to the lack of options in the area for female hockey players, Morgan faced some obstacles. 

“I definitely played on a lot of boys teams, so being the only girl on all-boys teams was probably an experience that a lot of women my age who play hockey had. It was great but, definitely, it’s a bit hard being the only girl sometimes. You have to work twice as hard just to keep up and compete with the boys, earn their respect and everything,” she said. 

The journey would eventually land Morgan at Long Island State in New York.

She’d become the first Shark athlete to be drafted to a professional team when the Metropolitan Riveters of the National Women’s Hockey League made her dream of playing at the next level come true. 

“It wasn’t necessarily something that I was expecting, but my coaches at LIU were really great in helping me find a team to play for, that was going to work with my professional career schedule. So, I’m really excited. It’s a great feeling to know that I can continue playing hockey at a high level,” said Morgan.

Morgan will make the move back to New York and work as a student-teacher while playing hockey.

And for mom, all those trips in the minivan were worth it. 

“You get a lot of great family time being in the car together, going to the games, just watching her play and it’s something that she’s had a passion for her entire life," Peggy said. 

Back in the gym, the work continues.

That’s a passion that’ll continue not just as a player, but as an ambassador to young girls who also love the sport. 

“A lot of my friends just like still playing hockey at the elite level and we’re really just like trying to definitely reach back wherever we can and like build the sport for young girls because that’s what it’s all about is watching the sport grow and doing what we love and sharing it with other people,” said Schauer.