TAYLOR: Avery Pickering: A hockey life filled with opportunities

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Most young college hockey players can’t wait to get home for a few months of rest and relaxation the moment another gruelling NCAA D-1 season comes to an end.

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Avery Pickering is a little different. A graduate of Balmoral Hall in Winnipeg, Pickering is a former U18 national team player who is a Top 4 defender with the Raiders at Colgate University.

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However, this past spring, Pickering was laser-focused on academics. A molecular biology major (with a minor in physics), she’s a two-time American Hockey Coaches Association All-American Scholar and a two-time member of ECAC All-Academic Team. She delayed her return home to St. Adolphe this summer in order to study just a little harder.

“I went on an extended study trip and then did some research on campus, so I didn’t get back until about June 1,” she explained. “We were running a study — actually with our team throughout the year. A few of our STEM majors were involved looking at how sub-concussive head impacts affect the gut microbiome (for those unaware, just Google it) with the ice hockey team.

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“They’ve done the study with the football team before, but there hasn’t been any study of its kind on female athletes, so we were taking data of head impacts for a two month stretch of the season. We had helmet sensors so we could tell whenever someone had a head impact in practice or in games, and we were taking samples of microbiomes for all the participants daily, throughout the period. The study is still ongoing.

“Then, because of the work I’ve been doing on that with the professor, I got to stay once the season was over and do some research on a lot of different places that have microbiomes. The cave microbiome is one, so I got to go to Wyoming and go caving and collect samples. It was pretty cool.”

Avery declared her major just this year and her immediate plan is to complete a biomedical engineering degree after her hockey career at Colgate, but she admitted that there were a lot of different possibilities for how grad school might go.

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“If I wind up wanting to do med school or something different, I have a number of options,” she said. “So, I’m kind of still trying to figure it out right now, which is wonderful, but I’ve never been good at making decisions.”

Perhaps not off the ice. She’s damn good at making decisions on the ice.

“Avery stepped right into a pretty prominent role with our team almost immediately on her arrival here two seasons ago,” said Greg Fargo, the former head coach at Colgate who is now the head coach with New York in the PWHL. “She was immediately in our top defensive pairing. It’s pretty incredible when you think about how she stepped into this role as a freshman. That seldom happens.”

As for Pickering herself, it would be hard to find a better place to play than Colgate, a small (3,200 students), rural campus in Hamilton, N.Y., about 330 km. north of New York City.

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“Yeah, we’ve had a couple really good seasons and I’ve had a couple good seasons, so it’s been awesome so far,” she said modestly. “With Greg Fargo leaving to coach in New York, they wound up giving the job to our assistant coach, Stefan Decosse, and he’s been great.”

This summer, Pickering has been training with Evolution Hockey at the Winnipeg Winter Club and playing in the PV Elite three-on-three league in Winkler with her brothers, Pittsburgh Penguins rookie D-man Owen Pickering and Red Deer Rebels defenceman Graeme Pickering.

She’s working hard on the ice this off-season for more than one reason. After a season at Colgate in which she had three goals, 20 points and was a plus-20 in 39 games playing against the opponents’ top lines, she wants to be even better in 2025-26. As well, after wearing an ‘A’ for Canada’s U18 team last year, she wants to crack the Development Team lineup and hopefully play in the 2026 or 2030 Winter Olympics.

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And, of course, the PWHL remains a goal.

“My dream has always been to play in the Olympics, so I, I’m working towards doing that as soon as possible,” she said. “And I absolutely want to play in the PWHL. The league has done really well in its first couple of years so, over the next couple of years, we’ll see what the league’s trajectory looks like and see what happens with my academic plans.

“It’s another variable to consider and I know I keep talking about having a hard time making decisions. There are a lot of things that I’m trying to figure out regarding what comes after school, but I think I would love to be able to play in the PWHL. It just seems like a really exciting opportunity.”

Sounds as if Avery Pickering’s whole life is a really exciting opportunity.

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