MILAN (AP) — As soon as U.S. hockey defender Laila Edwards steps onto the Olympic ice before Thursday’s gold-medal game against Canada, she scans the stands for the real MVP: her 91-year-old grandmother.
Their shared ceremony — which took place during Monday night’s Team USA semifinal game — was made possible only by a flood of donations through a GoFundMe campaign, with the largest individual contributions coming from NFL fraternity tandem and hometown allies Travis and Jason Kelce.
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“When she came in, she looked around,” her grandmother Ernestine Gray told The Associated Press. “And I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything to distract her.’ And then she did see me and I waved to her and she waved back to me.”
Edwards, the first black female hockey player to represent the United States in the Olympics, formed her own team in Milan. The fundraiser enabled 10 family members and four friends to travel from the United States to Italy for her Olympic debut. Others pay their own way.
After the game, Edwards told The Associated Press that her family’s presence in Milan “means everything to me.”
“They helped me get here, build this team and make my dream come true, so it means a lot,” she said.
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“How can we afford it?”
Hours before puck dropped on Monday, the Edwards family was ready.
Edwards’ mother, Charonne Gray Edwards, had strict rules about travel. She asked everyone to meet in the hotel lobby 2.5 hours before the game and dress in their Team USA best. They hailed a cab to accommodate the large group – including Edwards’ parents, grandmother, aunt, cousin and brother – and loaded it.
When she called them a month before the Olympics to tell them she had been selected for the team, her parents were unsure whether the family would be able to make the trip. They could afford it for two people, but the entire family – all of whom had supported her over the years – would have been too expensive. And they didn’t book an early flight or lock in a cheaper hotel rate for fear of spelling doom for her.
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“We have to start talking about how to raise money,” Gray-Edwards said. “Who’s going to go? How can we afford it?”
Her family is used to watching her from a distance. When Edwards was 13, she left home to attend Bishop Kearney Selects Academy in Rochester, New York, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin to play her senior season for the top-ranked Badgers.
Edwards is widely expected to be a top-three pick in June’s Professional Women’s Hockey League draft, along with Wisconsin teammate Caroline Harvey and Minnesota’s Abby Murphy.
Still, Edwards’ Olympic debut is what everyone wants to see.
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Her father, Robert Edwards, started a GoFundMe campaign titled “Send Leila’s Family to the Olympics to cheer her on!” He set an ambitious goal of $50,000 so they wouldn’t have to choose between buying tickets to one of her games or paying their electric bill in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
“There’s a lot of ups and downs in hockey at such a high level, so she needs someone there,” her father said. “So I was like, ‘Well, egos be damned: We’re going to have a fundraiser.'” “
“Queen of Cleveland”
The Kells brothers grew up in the same town as Edwards. They’ve been fans of hers since 2023, when she became the first Black player to make the U.S. senior women’s national team, and gave her a shout-out on their popular podcast “New Heights.”
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The top GoFundMe donation, $10,000, came from an anonymous source; Edwards has confirmed it came from Kelsey’s family. As of early Thursday, the Edwards family had raised more than $61,000.
What’s more, Travis Kelce offered unsolicited advice to the “Queen of Cleveland,” a nickname her teammates gave her after the U.S.-Canada game there in November. Jason Kelce and his wife, Kelly, were in the stands to cheer on the United States in their 5-0 victory over Sweden on Monday. Edwards was a forward defender and dished out one assist.
Her parents said the generosity of the Kelchi family and locals is another example of the tight-knit way the town operates, even though their daughter moved away when she was young. Edwards was considered a future face of women’s lacrosse and an inspiration to the black community in Ohio and beyond.
While diversity is represented in many sports such as football, it has not had an impact on winter sports, and there were very few black athletes at the Milan Cortina Olympics. Men’s and women’s hockey around the world, including in the United States, remains predominantly white.
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“Just hearing all the people of color talking about, ‘I’ve never watched hockey before, but I’m watching,'” Gray-Edwards said. “I’m interested to see what the ratings are. Because everyone is at home and everyone is talking about it. All these people want to buy jerseys.”
For Gray-Edwards, the most meaningful moment was seeing the little boy walk up to her daughter and ask for her autograph.
“That means they’re not going to say, ‘Oh, this is a girl who plays hockey.'” They’re going to say, “This is a good hockey player.” So it doesn’t matter if she’s black, female — she’s a good player,” Gray-Edwards said.
But Gray-Edwards’ most cherished memory may not come from the game or the score — but from watching her 91-year-old mother and her 22-year-old daughter at the rink together.
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“You can see them waving to each other. My mom loves jumping, oh, she just loves it,” Gray-Edwards said.
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John Wawrow in Milan contributed to this report.
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AP Winter Olympics coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
