Love of the game has allowed Wyse twins to flourish in hockey

It's a feeling that anyone who has played hockey, who loves the game, can relate to.
You can play football or basketball, golf or baseball, bowling or tennis. But there's nothing quite like the feeling of lacing up a pair of skates and hearing that first cut of steel into the frozen ice.
Maybe it takes you back to a simpler time. Maybe it's the vibe of the rink. Maybe it's a combination of everything.
But there's little arguing it's a unique feeling that lives in the blood of millions who have come to love the sport.

"I like the cold air," Ebony Wyse said.
"And the sounds of pucks hitting the boards," her twin sister, Essence, added. "When you're not at the rink for a long time, you don't realize how much you miss it until you finally get on it. You're like, 'Oh my gosh, I love it.'"

As the Blue Jackets host the annual Hockey Is For Everyone Night presented by Vorys at Nationwide Arena tonight, if you're going to start somewhere, that's as good a place as any.
The things that make hockey special are the same for everyone who sets foot on the ice, including the Wyse twins. But their story, as African-American girls in a sport that has been overwhelming white and male for so much of it history, stands out as unique yet so familiar.
There have been triumphs and tears, successes and setbacks as their hockey career has grown from the youth ranks to three seasons at Olentangy High School. But the memories and friendships made will last a lifetime for the central Ohio family.
"I feel like the community is really supportive, the friendships and relationships you can take out of it, and meeting new people," Essence said. "It's not perfect, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives based on what we have experienced."

Getting Their Start

If their mother, LaKesha, had her way, Ebony and Essence would have been figure skaters.
LaKesha enjoyed the sport growing up and was eager to enroll her daughters as they got older, but the sisters lasted less than a year in the sport, thanks to the result of one of their first competitions.
"I got second and Essence got first," Ebony said. "So I quit."

Essence didn't last much longer either, partly because her sister was no longer taking part but also because a different form of competition on skates took over. While Ebony and Essence were trying their hand at figure skating, their younger brother, Elijah, put on skates of his own and started hockey lessons to help fill the time at the rink.
It quickly became apparent Elijah had a natural talent at the sport of hockey, prompting a coach to suggest to LaKesha and her husband, Joe, to take Elijah to the Columbus Ice Hockey Club to earn more ice time and grow his skills.
An NHL Hockey Is For Everyone program, the Columbus Ice Hockey Club and its founder, John Haferman, have introduced thousands of Central Ohio children to the sport over the years, providing instruction and equipment to anyone who walks through the doors.
At first, Elijah was the only one on the ice, but then Essence joined. Then, at Lakesha's urging, Ebony completed the trio
"I was like, 'You can skate, this is ridiculous,'" LaKesha recalls telling Ebony. "'I have two kids out there and you're sitting right next to me? You have to go, too.' "
Suddenly, the Wyse family was a hockey family. Essence went through a rotation playing in goal one week and was hooked, while Ebony still preferred to skate out.
A natural chatterbox as opposed to Ebony's more quiet personality, Essence also became a walking stats encyclopedia. There were family trips to Blue Jackets games, where Essence ended up with one of Ryan Johansen's sticks, and Pittsburgh Penguins practices, the latter because Marc-Andre Fleury became Essence's favorite player.
"Essence sat right there next to the glass and she was just enthralled," Joe said of the family's trip to Pittsburgh. "She always says something, but one of my favorite pictures of her is just sitting there, taking everything in. For a long time, she was our statistician. She could tell us every player on every roster. It was just amazing."
The family continued playing through the CIHC, affording them a chance to take part in a variety of special hockey activities. In 2016, the girls went to the Willie O'Ree Skills Weekend in Philadelphia, an annual tournament that brings together Hockey Is For Everyone club representatives to play the game and meet the first Black player in NHL history, an event Ebony describes as "tons of fun."

Ebony and Essence also twice have gone to Minnesota for camps, and there was even a trip across the border to Ontario for a tournament. Meanwhile, closer to home, the 17-year-olds are juniors who have skated the past three seasons for the team at Olentangy in Lewis Center, where they also play field hockey and lacrosse.
Complete with an Olentangy-themed paint job on her mask, Essence served as the Braves' starting goaltender this past year, while Ebony spent time on both the varsity and junior varsity squads.
But their path has not been without adversity, including battles for playing time, injuries and fitting in on a team that has struggled in recent years.
"Being a girl, you always have to work not even 100 times harder, 1,000 times harder than the boys," Essence said. "You make one little mistake and it might go against you because you are a girl. I just think, I don't think people realize how hard you actually have to work."

Breaking Barriers

But as the twins have gotten older, the opportunities in the sport have become harder to come by. The path for high-level girls hockey in Columbus narrows significantly the older players get, making competition and development difficult for those who wish to stay in the area.
To that end, efforts are under way to continue to increase the pathways to success. Next year, the Ohio AAA Blue Jackets junior team will be creating an Under-14 girls team, with planning in place to expand the age group offerings as each year goes on. As part of the Hockey Is For Everyone celebration, Vorys is presenting a $10,000 donation to the AAA program at tonight's game to help get the girls program off the ground.
"I think every year that Hockey Is For Everyone is so inspiring, and this year I think is just another really great example of that," said Michael Martz, managing partner at Vorys. "These two 17-year-old young ladies, the passion that they have, the determination that they have and the role that they are playing in helping make hockey a sport that is open to all is just really, really inspiring."

As the saying goes, if you can see it, you can be it, and that's worked both directions for Ebony and Essence. Two of the faces they've been able to recognize and follow as role models have been standout women's player Saroya Tinker and Columbus native Ayo Adeniye.
Tinker is a Yale and Team Canada alumna who plays for Toronto of the professional Premier Hockey Federation, and she serves as a mentor for a host of young BIPOC women hoping to make it in sports. Adeniye, meanwhile, is a CIHC and AAA Blue Jackets alum who currently plays college hockey at Adrian University in Michigan.
"We'd joke around, have fun and talk about different things that we were experiencing or just ask him questions," Essence said of Adeniye. "He's only a few years older than us, too. It's just fun to hang out with him."
As for Tinker, they're able to chat more in the summer when everyone has more time, but the professional player is a valuable resource as well. And as Ebony said, "When she followed us on Instagram, we all freaked out."
On the other side of things, the Wyse twins are starting to see the impact they can have inspiring the next generations. Giving back is an important part of working with the CIHC, with kids who go through the program and stick with it expected to become mentors and teachers for the next generation. This past summer, Ebony and Essence worked with kids in the summer, teaching them skills on the street hockey rink in the morning and then helping teach them how to ice skate in the afternoons.
Spending time working with kids is one of the reasons the twins were chosen as winners of scholarships from the Black Girl Hockey Club last summer. Those scholarships are given out by the club, which works to inspire and sustain passion for the game of hockey within the Black community, each year to young female players anywhere in the world who love the game and also work to make it a better place.
Experiences such as those can only help immeasurably for those who hope to follow in the twins' footsteps, as Ebony and Essence have learned over the years.
"We did a girls clinic (one time), and afterward I went to a farmers market with them," Ebony said. "There was this little girl who was at the clinic before and she was at the farmers market and she was like, 'You were so cool.' It felt good."
"I think it's cool when you get to the ice rink and you see the little kids running around and you hear like, 'It's a girl goalie. That's a girl player,'" Essence added. "When we played in New Albany a few weeks ago, I heard someone say, 'It's a girl goalie.' Hearing something like that, it puts a smile on your face."
As Joe admits, far too often it's easy for him to pick out his daughters on the ice simply because of their skin color or gender. To this day, Ebony and Essence said they will text their parents with excitement if they see an African-American player on an opposing team, and time shared in the locker room with other female players always seems to turn into a quick bonding experience whenever it happens.
But as time goes by, there will be a lot more faces like Ebony and Essence Wyse in the sport of hockey. On a night where Hockey Is For Everyone has celebrated, the Wyse twins remind everyone of what can happen when the love for the sport is allowed to flourish.
"I know it hasn't always been a smooth road," LaKesha said. "That song 'Be Alive' from King Richard, there's a verse that says the road was never paved with gold, and it hasn't been. They've had their challenges, they've had their tears..."
"A lot of tears," Ebony said.
"But they've definitely grown from it," LaKesha said. "We've grown in having to counsel them through experiences we didn't experience growing up, that feeling of being excluded. It's been a learning experience for all of us, but they've definitely come out on top. It didn't hold them down, it didn't keep them from going forward."