Chyna Taylor, 16, played in Louisville co-ed leagues before she earned a Team USA roster spot and committed to play college hockey at Wisconsin.
Sports Illustrated named Louisville native and up-and-coming hockey player Chyna Taylor as its 2025 SportsKid of the Year.
Taylor, 16, attends Lovell Academy in Massachusetts and has committed to play for the University of Wisconsin beginning in 2027. At 15, she was the the youngest member of Team USA's U18 hockey team at the 2025 U18 Women's World Championship in Finland.
The "new face of hockey," a title given to Taylor by Sports Illustrated, is not from the locales typically associated with the sport. Before Taylor took the ice for Team USA, a male or female player from Kentucky had never featured for the national team. For the 2024-25 season, the Bluegrass State had 2,044 registered hockey players, 199 of which were female, according to a USA Hockey calculation. Massachusetts, for comparison, had 11,461 female players and 45,276 total participants in the sport.
When Taylor first put on a pair of skates at the age of five, she wanted to master figure skating, but caught the hockey bug a year later. Taylor grew up playing in a co-ed league because Louisville did not have many youth hockey players.
"All the girls are really excited to skate with her. So she's become a little celebrity around our local hockey community, but you'll never get it from meeting her," Louisville Ice Cardinals hockey director Louie Abounader told The Courier Journal in 2024. "She's very humble and takes it in stride and just wants to play hockey and have fun. So I'm really proud of her. The whole association is proud of her."
Taylor will play for Team USA at the 2026 U18 Women's World Championship, which takes place Jan. 10-18 in Canada. All Team USA games will be televised on the NHL Network.
Athletes who have previously received SportsKid of the Year from Sports Illustrated include LeBron James, Michelle Wie, Eli Manning and Dominque Dawes.
Former Courier Journal sports reporter Prince James Story contributed.Reach reporter Leo Bertucci at [email protected] or @leober2chee on X, formerly known as Twitter
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Wisconsin hockey recruit Chyna Taylor wins SI’s 2025 SportsKid of Year
Category: General Sports
