Meet Zoe Cliche!
Tell us about yourself!
My name is Zoé Cliche. I am 13 and I live in Ottawa, Ontario. I started playing hockey when I was five. When I was six, I got the chance to try a game as a goalie and since then I haven’t left the crease. I started playing with my sister on a girls team, but quickly changed to boys hockey. Now, I am a goaltender for the Ottawa Jr. 67’s AAA hockey club and I am the only girl left in the HEO AAA league across all age groups. My goals for hockey are: playing NCAA D1, playing in the Olympics with Team Canada, and be the first woman to play an official game in the NHL.
What made you want to be a WHL Brand Ambassador?
Having a chance to represent WHL is a chance to inspire other girls and share my love for hockey with other girls. I want to show others that if I can do it, they can do it. I want to encourage the growth of the women’s hockey community around the world.
What are you most looking forward to as a #WHLAMBASSADOR?
What I am mostly looking forward to as a #WHLAMBASSADOR is that I will get the chance to inspire other girls and younger generations of women’s hockey I want to show them that anything is possible if you do it with passion and heart. I am excited to meet new people and share my love for the game with them.
What’s something not a lot of people know about you?
When I was in 3rd grade, I travelled the world for a year with my family and missed my hockey season. When we came back I was so excited to get back on the ice and got to go to a Montreal Canadiens game a week after we came back.
If you could sit down and have dinner with one female hockey player, who would it be and why?
If I could sit down with one female hockey player, I would choose Shannon Szabados. I would choose her because she broke down many barriers during her professional hockey career with the boys, breaking many records in the WHL (Western Hockey League), AJHL, SPHL and many others in minor, junior and pro leagues. She also played with Team Canada at the Olympics and in many World Championships (which are some of my most precious dreams) and even won gold many times. She now is a part of the PWHPA and when I get older I want to follow her path.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given in hockey or in life?
The game of life, just like hockey is never over until the last buzzer. You can never back down and never give up until you reach the end, until you hear the sound of the final buzzer. You never know what tomorrow will be, so you need to have fun and smile because how the future will look is unexpected. Every save you make, every step you take, you forget it and the next one is the most important, that’s what life is all about. It’s about your future, not your past, about your next save, not your last goal.
What’s your dream for women’s hockey?
My dream for women’s hockey is that it becomes equal to men’s hockey and that every woman gets the same chance as a man would get in the hockey world. I want to grow the hockey community around girls and show the boys that we are as good, if not better in everything we do, on and off the ice. Girls of future generations should get a chance to pursue their hockey dream just as much as any guy.
