Color of Hockey: Roberts shooting, scoring more for Penn State women's team

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Katelyn Roberts, a junior forward on Penn State University’s NCAA Division I women’s hockey team.

Katelyn Roberts is trying to be selfish.

The 20-year-old forward for Penn State University’s women’s hockey team was encouraged by coach Jeff Kampersal to shoot more after she passed up some scoring opportunities earlier this season.

“He's not the first person to say that,” Roberts said. “I think that just kind of goes into who I am as a player, and sometimes to a fault. I do look to pass first, it’s just how I’ve always been, but I've tried to work on it since he made that comment.”

The junior is following Kampersal’s advice, and it’s paying off for Penn State (13-4), ranked 12th in NCAA Division I women’s hockey weekly polls by USA Hockey/Rink Live and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine, and had a seven-game winning streak end in a 3-1 loss to Merrimack in the opener of the Smashville Women’s Collegiate Hockey showcase in Nashville on Friday.

With 17 points (five goals, 12 assists in 18 games, Roberts is fifth on the team in goals and third on the Penn State scoring list. Last season, Roberts was third on the team with 28 points (13 goals, 15 assists) in 38 games.

“’Robbie,’ she's a great athlete, and she's very cerebral,” Kampersal said. “Sometimes there's shots available that she just needs to step into and unleash, because she has a wicked shot. But she's been doing that more so in the last few weeks.”

Roberts had six points (one goal, five assists) in a five-game point streak that ended Friday, including a goal and an assist with a season-high seven shots in a 7-1 win against Lindenwood on Nov. 16.

“She could be a 20-goal scorer, and equal that in assists, she can do all that,” Kampersal said. “She's a power-play person, so pretty much the sky’s the limit for her.”

Roberts knew little about hockey as a child in Katy, Texas, a half-hour drive west of Houston. She discovered the sport after her family moved to Chanhassen, Minnesota.

“I was about 4, 5 years old, and I had never touched a rink,” Roberts said. “When we moved and there was a pond in my neighborhood, and all the kids in my neighborhood skated on it, and they were, like, ‘You've never skated before? And I was like, ‘No.’

“I told my mom I want to learn to skate, ‘We’ve got to do lessons.’ She put me in figure skating lessons at the first and then one day, I was leaving lessons and, I'm like, looking at these kids and these hockey players on the next ice and, I'm like, ‘I think I want to try that.’ I did, and just fell in love with hockey from there.”

Though Roberts was new to the sport, her mother, Sonya Roberts, who is originally from Minnesota, wasn’t.

“She was a hockey cheerleader, so she knew a decent amount about how to skate,” Katelyn Roberts said. “She knows a lot about hockey, and that helped. But other than that, I had no knowledge of the game of hockey as a whole until we moved.”

She played hockey with boys and moved on to organized girls hockey at 10. She played for Chaska/Chanhassen High School where she was a captain her senior year in 2021-22 and led the team in scoring with 38 points (21 goals, 17 assists) in 22 games.

After high school, Roberts chose to go to Penn State rather than remain in a state that’s home to several elite women’s college hockey programs.

“I wasn't the most developed player at the time,” she said. “Then also, I kind of wanted to be away from home and experience life and new beginnings. What better way to do that than through college and going somewhere a little bit further than Minneapolis or Mankato or even Bemidji?”

Roberts said she enjoys being a role model at Penn State and at home, where she was a volunteer coach for MN Unbounded, a program co-founded in 2021 by Meredith Lang and former Bemidji State defenseman Tina Kampa for girls of color in the state.

“It was very fulfilling and empowering, to say the least,” Roberts said. “I think sometimes as an athlete, you forget the impact that you have, especially as a person of color.

“Being able to volunteer and talk to people about my journey as a person of color, just growing up and making it to the D1 level, and seeing how they took to that, and how they were inspired by that, was very just humbling and really made me realize, like what I'm doing has an impact beyond just myself.”