Flyers take Pride Night opportunity to support more inclusion in hockey

When the Flyers came to Nora Cothren and told her that James van Riemsdyk and Scott Laughton wanted to provide game tickets to the You Can Play Project, she thought of a worthy recipient immediately.

The project’s mission is to ensure safety and inclusion for all who participate in sports, including LGBTQ+ athletes, coaches and fans, and Cothren knew she wanted them to go to a young, out hockey player: Juls Ries.

The Flyers will hold their annual Pride Night celebration at Monday’s matinee against the Carolina Hurricanes.

Ries, of Maple Shade, had come out to her hockey team three years ago. Cothren, who has known Ries since she was 9 and coached her for four years, had stood proudly by Ries’ side, marveling at her confidence and wishing she, Cothren, had been able to do the same when she was younger.

Ries, now 16, said she had known her orientation for a long time but took a while to come to terms with it. She came out to her family first and then told her team when she was 13. Cothren did not tell her own team until she was 18 and the season had ended.

That senior season, Cothren was captain of her high school and club hockey teams, and her mind created a list of things that could possibly go wrong if she came out to them. She worried she’d be a distraction. She worried it would affect her play and her role on the teams. And most of all, she worried that she would lose all her friends.

Cothren’s teammates had never been mean to a member of the LGBTQ community, but some of the language they used made her uncomfortable with admitting she was gay. She also knew her teammates hated the stereotype that all female hockey players must be lesbians, and she didn’t want to reinforce that.

When Cothren finally came out to her teams, she was fully accepted. She went into Smith College completely open about her sexuality and had a wonderful experience. But she will never get back the chance to play with her high school team as her full self. Knowing that, she has dedicated herself to helping young athletes feel comfortable in their own skin.

“Getting to see kids like Juls be themselves at very early ages and be fully embraced by their teammates and have the experience of being their full selves on the ice, off the ice, with their teammates, it’s why I do what I do,” Cothren said.

Since graduating with an education degree, Cothren has gotten involved through the Ed Snider Foundation as well as the You Can Play Project, for which she is co-chair of the Northeast Regional Board. It was started by Patrick Burke, whose late brother Brendan was considered to be the first out athlete with a tie to the NHL. (Their father Brian was a longtime NHL general manager, Patrick is a scout, and Brendan was a high school goalie and college manager before dying in an auto accident at 21.)

You Can Play’s connections to the league led to the NHL becoming one of the first professional leagues to partner with the foundation. There are now 12 partners including the NFL, NASCAR, and Major League Soccer.

Despite the early involvement, Cothren said there’s still a way to go. Insensitive language around the sport, whether it’s in the locker room or in the stands, still acts as a deterrent for some hockey players who may want to come out. And then there’s the lack of representation.

“I think it says a lot about hockey that there hadn’t even been a retired player that had come out before that,” Cothren said of Brendan Burke. “There’s never been an active player, but there’s not even a retired player.”

Cothren attributes that to the team mentality of the sport. Hockey is so reliant on every player on the roster, and it’s intimidating for some to stand out in any way. There’s always the worry that if the team starts to do poorly, people will somehow try to trace it back to the player who came out, Cothren said. There’s also still a level of machismo that’s associated with the sport and is in contrast to the stereotype that gay men are flamboyant.

On July 19, 2021, Luke Prokop became the first player on an NHL contract to come out as gay. A third-round pick of Nashville in the 2020 draft, the 19-year-old defenseman is still playing in juniors. But he has the LGBTQ community behind him, waiting for the day he plays his first NHL game and makes more history.

While there are no out NHL players, even the act of publicly supporting the LGBTQ community goes a long way, Cothren said. She vividly remembers when Claude Giroux and Scott Hartnell appeared in a one of You Can Play’s original videos.

“That was life-changing for me,” Cothren said. “You know, as someone who is out in the hockey world, having these guys that play for a team that has been a part of my life for almost the entirety of my life saying folks like me were included in hockey was really important. It gave me the confidence to share my story and get involved in the work and try to make a difference.”

Cothren, a longtime Flyers fan, has always followed van Riemsdyk because of his work with the LGBTQ community. Van Riemsdyk was close with Patrick Burke and also got involved from the start. She also admired Laughton because she heard he approached Patrick Burke to offer his assistance. When Cothren reached out to him over Twitter to thank him for speaking out in a video the Flyers released, she was surprised he answered and was impressed by how serious he was about helping out.

Laughton said he knew he wanted to get involved as soon as he heard about You Can Play. For him, it really comes down to being a good person, he said. Both he and van Riemsdyk spoke of the importance of educating yourself and others about how to be a good ally and how it helps to grow the game they love by welcoming more people.

“You hate hearing stories talking about before,” van Riemsdyk said, “where you hear people say it just became not fun for me because of whatever the issues or whatever their certain circumstances may have been, whether it’s different language that they didn’t like hearing a lot, and that was hurtful for people to say.”

Coming into the 2021-22 season, the two of them knew they wanted to do something more than just supporting You Can Play and holding Pride Night. They came up with the idea of providing tickets to You Can Play for 12 games this season. The fact that it goes beyond Pride Night makes such a difference, Cothren said, and putting their names behind it is the biggest impact they can have as athletes.

“Sport is such a tool for social change,” Cothren said. “If athletes take these causes and really become spokespeople for them, it changes so many lives, and it honestly saves so many lives. And I can’t imagine what it would have done for my mental health growing up to have one of these games.”

As a player on a Snider hockey team, which emphasizes inclusivity, Ries has not had to deal with negative reactions from her teammates. But she can see how intimidating it would be for others who don’t have the support network she does, so Laughton and van Riemsdyk’s actions have meant a lot to her.

“I think it’s super cool because I think a lot of people who play sports have a really hard time with their sexuality or anything like that,” Ries said. “So it’s really cool to be able to show people that are OK with it and that they’re accepted and that there’s nothing wrong or different about it.”

Ries will be attending the game with three women who have had a big impact on her life — her mother Jaclynn Trakalo, aunt Brittany Adams, and grandmother Joan Ries. Although she will miss out on seeing her favorite player, Sean Couturier, she’s excited to get to watch from the penalty box area, and she hopes that she and the others hosted by van Riemsdyk and Laughton will be able to make a difference.

“I just hope people realize there’s nothing wrong with who you are,” Ries said.