Laila Edwards scored twice Friday as the United States beat Switzerland 7-0 to open its defense of the women’s world hockey championship in Esbjerg, Denmark. She is the Olympic gold medalist who, in 2023, became the first Black woman to play for the U.S. senior national team.
Edwards deflected a Caroline Harvey shot past the Swiss goaltender on a power play with 7:04 left in the second period to make it 3-0, according to USA Hockey. She added her second goal with about a minute left to close the scoring. Hannah Bilka also scored twice, Hilary Knight, Casey O’Brien and Kirsten Simms scored once each, and Aerin Frankel needed only eight saves for the shutout, the Boston Globe reported.
Twenty players on the roster won gold at the Milan Cortina Olympics in February. Edwards was one of them. She had two goals and six assists in seven games there and became the first Black American woman to win Olympic gold in ice hockey.
Hockey has kept its doors narrow for Black girls for as long as the sport has existed: ice time costs money, rinks are not in every neighbourhood, and the national team had no Black woman on it until Edwards. She was born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and started on figure skates at three before switching to hockey. She went on to win three NCAA titles at Wisconsin, was named most valuable player of the 2024 world championship at age 20, and was picked fourth overall by San Jose in the 2026 Professional Women’s Hockey League draft, the highest a Black woman has been chosen.
She is also the first Black woman to score for the U.S. at a world championship, a mark she set in 2024. Friday’s goals add to a count that did not exist before she arrived.
The win came with the sport’s governing body in a fight with national federations. Canada and the U.S. had said they might wear generic jerseys at the tournament because of a dispute over commercial rights, as the Canadian Press reported before the games began.
The U.S. is 14-0 all-time against Switzerland. Canada, which opened with a 5-1 win over Sweden, holds 13 world titles to the Americans’ 11. The 10 teams are split into two groups of five, the top four in each advance, and the final is Nov. 16. If Edwards keeps scoring, the girls who watch will not have to wait for the next first.
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