The PWHL Billie Jean King MVP Award winner tells PEOPLE about her journey to ice hockey and how she’s seen the sport grow

The list of Aerin Frankel’s accomplishments in 2026 is so long, it can’t be contained in one trophy case: leading Team USA to an Olympic gold medal, winning the Professional Women’s Hockey League Billie Jean King MVP Award, and being named the PWHL Goaltender of the Year.

But the 27-year-old American hockey star’s biggest impact might’ve come during a quiet week back in Boston, when the most decorated women’s hockey goalie in the world came home to lead her eponymous girls’ goaltending camp. 

“It’s honestly one of the things I just take a lot of pride in,” Frankel tells PEOPLE. “I never had a female goalie coach growing up that I could look up to. And I think, especially where I grew up in New York, there wasn’t a lot of girls’ hockey. My camp’s open to boys and girls, but for me, the idea behind it was to just have female coaches around. I thought it would be a great idea for a lot of those young players.”

The Chappaqua, New York native spent three days on the ice with 40 goaltenders — mostly girls — in full pads, both teaching them the finer details of one of the most demanding positions in sports and offering them community. Many of the young goalies were returning to the camp, which started in 2022, reuniting with Frankel and their friends. The camp has more than doubled in attendance since it started four summers ago, another example of the continued growth of women’s ice hockey.

The PWHL, the pro women’s ice hockey league Frankel has dominated since after her first year out of college, has also doubled in teams since its inaugural season in 2024. “I think it says a lot about not only the growth of women’s sports, but women’s hockey too,” Frankel reflects. “It’s incredible.”

Nicknamed the “Green Monster” in an ironic nod to her 5-foot-5 frame and to the “wall” in left field at Boston’s famed Fenway Park, Frankel is entering her fourth season with the Boston Fleet this winter, looking to add her first professional championship to that already full trophy case.

“I feel really lucky to be able to do this as my full-time job now, and playing in the PWHL has been so much fun,” Frankel says. “Every year kind of has new and exciting parts to it, so I definitely enjoyed a little relaxation this summer, but I’m really eager to get going again.”

It’s always been tough to get Frankel’s mind off the ice. The two-time world championship-winning goalie for Team USA needs a few seconds to think if you ask her what else she likes to do with her time. There’s her Caesar salad Instagram account (“I’m a bit of a foodie,” she laughs), there’s other sports like golf and pickleball (“I like to be outside,” Frankel says), and there’s visits to New York to see her parents, Deborah and Peter, and brother Jake.

“But yeah…other than that, I’m just pretty focused on hockey,” Frankel grins.

A lifelong “rink rat,” the future Olympic gold medalist first fell in love with the ice when her parents took her to open skates when she was 3 years old.

“As I got older, I just kept asking to go back to the rink and skate, and they’d have a hard time getting me off the ice,” Frankel remembers. “Then I tried hockey for the first time and I loved it. No one else in my family had played, so I think my parents were a little bit intimidated by it. But I made a lot of great friends who were just as obsessed with hockey, and I think that kept me in it.”

Frankel played on boys’ teams until her sophomore year of high school, when she went off to boarding school and joined a girls’ ice hockey team. In college, Frankel won player of the year honors, goalie of the year awards, and led Northeastern to back-to-back Frozen Four semifinals in her last two years of school. At the time, the PWHL was still a rough idea, leading to her and other professional ice hockey hopefuls to spend 2023 training while awaiting funding for a league.

“Honestly, [playing professional hockey] wasn’t even on my radar at a young age,” Frankel says. “I watched a lot of professional hockey, but the landscape on the women’s side just wasn’t there. So, it wasn’t even in my brain that that was a possibility.”

Frankel says playing with other Team USA and Team Canada stars during the year after she graduated college in 2022 kept her “motivated” and determined to wait it out and see if the PWHL would actually take hold. And it did, in 2023, with funding from billionaire league owners Mark Walter and Kimbra Walter, and structural guidance from advisory board members like tennis great Billie Jean King and her wife Illana Kloss.

“The craziest moment for me was probably playing in that first professional game,” Frankel says, recalling Boston’s opening night in January 2024, when the team didn’t yet have a name and she still wore the Team USA pads she used for international competitions.

“It was awesome,” she says. “And a little bit emotional. Because, yes, it was a dream come true, but also because I had heard so much from the older players about the grind and the years and years of training on their own and pushing for more, and just hoping this league would one day exist.”

And now it does, with the PWHL’s fourth season beginning on Dec. 5. Night in and night out, women’s hockey games are now played in front of thousands — many of them young girls with their eyes on players like Frankel, seeing firsthand that a future as a professional hockey player is possible.

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