William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Mariya Rauf, a Yale University junior forward who coached a first-ever women’s team representing Pakistan to a bronze medal at the 2025 Amerigol LATAM Cup.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. -- Juwairyah Khalid felt sad when she heard her daughter, Zoya Quraishi, lament about the lack of players who look like her in women’s hockey.

“She was like, ‘Oh, I'm a girl, there’s no good girls in hockey, I have nobody to look up to,’” Khalid said. “So then I Googled ‘Pakistani,’ ‘South Asian,’ ‘Women of color in hockey’ and lo and behold, I found Mariya.”

Khalid found a role model for her 12-year-old daughter in Mariya Rauf, a junior forward for

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