Vicky Sunohara

Vicky Sunohara (born May 18, 1970) is a Canadian ice hockey coach, former ice hockey player, and three-time Olympic medallist.

She has been described as "the Wayne Gretzky of women's hockey" and is recognized as a trailblazer and pioneer for the sport.

In her freshman season, she led the Huskies in scoring as they claimed the 1989 ECAC Hockey conference championship title and was recognized as the ECAC Rookie of the Year.

In the 1989–90 season, she led the team in scoring again and was named to the NCAA All-American team.

Across 45 games with Northeastern, she scored 122 points (78 goals and 44 assists).

Sunohara also played hockey for the University of Toronto, where her team won the Ontario University Athletics women's ice hockey championships in 1990–91 and 1991–92.

She was named the OUA women's ice hockey Rookie of the Year in 1990–91.

When she was not involved in international competition, Sunohara was the captain and assistant coach for the Brampton Canadettes Thunder in the Canadian Women's Hockey League (formerly the Brampton Thunder of the National Women's Hockey League).

Sunohara participated in several Esso women's hockey nationals with Brampton.

Sunohara also played in the Central Ontario Women's Hockey League with the Scarborough Firefighters (1990–1994), Toronto Red Wings (1994–1996), and the Newtonbrook Panthers (1996–97).

She won seven gold medals at the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Championships, the first one coming in 1990.

In total, she won 15 gold medals and 3 silver medals as a member of Canada's national team.

Sunohara excelled for Team Canada in major tournaments.

She had 13 points in 16 games during three Olympics, and 41 points in 40 games during eight World Championships.

Sunohara finished her career with Team Canada with 119 points (56 goals and 62 assists) in 164 games.

Sunohara won an Olympic silver medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Besides the 1998, 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, Sunohara represented Canada in numerous international ice hockey competitions.

She continued with an Olympic gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, and another gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

She was named the top forward of the tournament in 2005 and her team, the Brampton Thunder, won the national title in 2006.

In 2011, Sunohara was named head coach of the University of Toronto Varsity Blues women's ice hockey team.

She was nationally recognized in 2019–20 and 2021-22 as the U Sports Women's Ice Hockey Coach of the Year and was named the 2019–20 Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Female Coach of the Year across all sports.

Sunohara began to play hockey as a small child and the love of the game came naturally to her as her late father, David Sunohara, was a hockey enthusiast who played college ice hockey with the Ryerson Rams.

Sunohara's father built a backyard rink in the winters and introduced his daughter to skating at the age of two and a half.

"My mother said that from the minute my father introduced me to hockey, I wouldn't do anything else," Sunohara commented, "I just loved it."

She began playing organized hockey on a boys team at age 5, but was eventually banned from the boys' leagues due to her gender.

She ended up dominating every level of girls' competition.

Sunohara attended Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, a suburban district of Toronto, where she was a standout on the women's ice hockey, field hockey, soccer, and flag football teams.

Following high school, Sunohara received a full athletic scholarship to Northeastern University in Boston, where she played two seasons with the Northeastern Huskies women's ice hockey program in the ECAC Hockey conference of the NCAA Division I.

U Sports, the governing body of university sport in Canada, named Sunohara the 2019–20 National Women's Ice Hockey Coach of the Year.

Ontario University Athletics also named her the 2019–20 Women's Ice Hockey Coach of the Year, in addition to the Female Coach of the Year across all sports.

Sunohara repeated as the U Sports Women’s Ice Hockey Coach of the Year in the 2021-22 season.

In 2022, The Hockey News ranked Sunohara as having the strongest qualifications to break the gender barrier and become the first female head coach in the National Hockey League.

In 2020, Sunohara was named to "TSN Hockey’s All-Time Women’s Team Canada," in recognition of her status as one of Canada’s best female hockey players of all time.

Sunohara is currently the head coach of the Varsity Blues women's ice hockey team of the University of Toronto.

As of 2020, she continued to rank in Canada's all-time top ten for games played, goals, and points.

Sunohara is credited with helping to expand the popularity of women's ice hockey, having trained and mentored many young girls in the sport.

Along with instructing at several hockey camps and clinics, she served as an assistant hockey coach at the Canadian women's national under-18 and under-19 team evaluation camps.

In 2022, Sunohara was an assistant coach on Canada’s under-18 women’s ice hockey team, which won gold at the world championships.

For two years, she was the Director of Women's Hockey at The Hill Academy in Vaughan, Ontario.

In 2020, Sunohara guided University of Toronto to winning the Ontario University Athletics women’s ice hockey title.