Interview: Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando
Shireen Ahmed talks with Olympic gold medalists, twin sisters and hockey legends Monique Lamoureux-Morando and Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson about their book Dare To Make History: Chasing a Dream and Fighting for Equity. They talk about playing hockey growing up in North Dakota, the adversity to becoming champions and their battle for women's equity in hockey. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, Shireen here! I’m very very excited today – also possibly torn for different reasons, but we will get into that later! Today I have the absolute pleasure of having Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando on the show. Yes, I'm talking about the stars of the 2018 Pyeongchang final. I’m talking about the formidable women’s hockey players from North Dakota who have recently announced their retirement. I’m so grateful that they’re on the show today. A little bit about them if you don’t know: they actually grew up playing hockey with their older brothers, who in addition to teaching them and playing with them taught them how to compete with everybody. There were no girls’ teams so they just played with the boys. Their careers skyrocketed and they won six world championships and three Olympic medals, including the one I mentioned, 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang – that broke my heart, but that’s okay!
They continue to face barriers and unequal treatment and one of the most important and impactful things they’ve done for women’s sport is literally fight against that injustice, and definitely we’ll get into that, including possibly boycotting the 2017 world championships, or they threaten to, rather. They really spoke up about inequality in women’s sport, which was hugely hugely important. They most recently published Dare to Make History, which is their story co-written by the two of them and it speaks about how they weren't willing to accept anything less equal treatment and their journey as hockey players, as moms, wives and formidable people. Welcome, Jocelyne and Monique!
Monique: Thanks for having us.
Jocelyne: Thanks for having us.
Shireen: Okay, so in addition to being amazing hockey players, Monique, another thing you’ve been doing which is also amazing in addition to both of you working on this book, is you're very pregnant.
Monique: Yeah. I’m about to go any minute. [Shireen laughs] Hopefully not this week. [laughs] Yeah, I’m 37 and a half weeks pregnant.
Shireen: Wow.
Monique: So, we’re having another boy coming up here shortly. We’re pretty excited to be growing our family, though.
Shireen: Congratulations to you. Maybe by the time this airs you might have another little player on your team.
Monique: [laughs] Yeah, I know. We probably will!
Shireen: So, let's talk a little bit about the beginning. Let’s talk about North Dakota. Let’s talk about your origin story in hockey and how that came to be.
Jocelyne: So, we have four older brothers and I think it's important to note that there was six of us born in a five year span, so we were very tight in age and I think when people hear that they’re like, aw, your poor mother! [laughs] But we just wanted to do whatever they were doing growing up, so if it was street hockey in the summer, baseball in the backyard, pond hockey in the winter. We just basically followed them everywhere, but we were not allowed to play unless we could keep up, so as long as we weren’t making the game worse we were allowed to play. So just from a very young age we just had to compete and try our hardest to keep up with our older brothers, and as you mentioned in the intro we did not have girls’ teams to play on growing up and starting in hockey, so we just played with the boys, which was kind of our normal with our household. But we always had each other, which made our journey unique.
As we got older and we weren't allowed to dress in the same locker room we at least were together in our own locker room, which is not the story of a lot of our teammates. So we’re just very fortunate that we had each other going through a process like that, because that’s not easy being basically segregated from your teammates and missing out on certain things that a team goes through. But yeah, we just learned to love the game from I think a very pure place growing up playing outside on a frozen pond, you know, no coaches or parents telling you what to do. One family, if they had to go up, their mom would blow the whistle three times – or that might’ve been our mom blowing it three times?
Monique: That was our mom.
Jocelyne: That was just a very fun way to learn to love the game and enjoy it, and I think that’ve why we've just been so passionate and have enjoyed the game for so long.
Shireen: So, your book is really amazing. I love the way that you both wrote it and there’s sections that, Monique, you contributed to, and there are sections that Jocelyne did. One of the things that really caught me – I love this – you talk about your family a lot, you’ve both been very family-oriented. Your great-grandma was 100 years old!
Monique: Yup! [laughs]
Shireen: And she was volunteering at an assisted living facility even though she was older than most of the people that were there. I was just wowed by that!
Monique: She was older than all of them! [laughs]
Shireen: That’s amazing, and just that energy – you seem to draw a lot from that energy of your family. So, did they come with you to all these things? The tournaments and the championships, were they able to be there? Or is that something that you struggled with if you had to be away from them?
Monique: Well, it wasn’t so much struggling being away, it was more of, like, with our parents when we were growing up you have two parents and six kids, and so our parents had to split time between figuring out who was gonna go to which game. We played a bunch of different sports growing up, but when you just look at hockey specifically our dad would bring out a calendar at the beginning, this big huge calendar he'd put on the desk, and he’d put everyone's schedule into the calendar for the year for practices and games, and then he’d get the game schedule and figure out, okay, I’m gonna take so and so here, Linda’s gonna take so and so there, and then we gotta get carpool situations for the other four. Because there would be at least four teams that they’d be dealing with, and so from a young age sometimes our parents can be at games and then when we went to boarding school it was the same thing, like, our brothers were playing juniors, we had one brother in college, we were at boarding school.
So, our national championship for example, our grandparents came to our freshman year national tournament and were able to be there, so that was huge for us. I still cherish them being able to come to that. Or the world championships in Kamloops, British Columbia in 2016 I believe it was, our grandparents were able to come to that and an aunt and uncle were able to come to that. So, they couldn’t come to everything, but whenever they could be somewhere, because our family was so large, it just always made that event extra special for us.
Jocelyne: A funny story though, our grandpa…So, in 2010 [Monique laughs] there was a test event in Vancouver in the fall. It was like a preseason tournament, basically, with us, Canada, Finland, Sweden. Our grandpa shows up and we’re 19 or 20 at the time and our grandpa shows up in a Hockey Canada hat and we're like, “Grandpa! What are you wearing?” [laughs] “You can’t wear that now!” It's just so funny to think about that, how they drove from Alberta to Vancouver to come support us and our grandpa’s wearing his Hockey Canada hat. It was funny.
Shireen: And just for the listeners that don't know, Jocelyne and Monique, one side of the family is from Alberta so they do have dual citizenship, which explains why grandpa’s wearing a Hockey Canada hat.
Monique: Yup.
Jocelyne: Yeah. [laughs]
Shireen: One of the things I wanted to ask is about your journey as twins also living together, being at boarding school together, you made teams and didn’t make teams together. Was there ever a time…Were you always synchronous in your love for hockey, or was there a time when one of you maybe wanted to step back a little bit?
Monique: I would say everything was always very mutual, like when we were deciding where to go to college it was never a conversation of are we gonna go together, it was just kind of this known that we were gonna go together and come to the decision together. Same thing when we transferred, we transferred from the University of Minnesota to University of North Dakota. It was just this…We both just had the same feeling that we needed to be somewhere else. So, yeah, I don't think we ever…I think we're lucky in that aspect of being twins that you didn’t always have to have a conversation about it, it was just this unspoken agreement and just this parallel love for the game and passion for the game.
Shireen: One of the things that I wanted to ask you and moving throughout that journey was when you both talk in the book very specifically about how you didn’t make the national team, and I’m just wondering in the process of writing this book was there stuff that you’re like, “No, that's too detailed?” Because you were very honest in how your names were the last two called in that meeting. I was just wondering, was there a process by which you guys hash out what will go in the book? Because obviously there's stuff that you’re not gonna put in there, I mean, it’s your life, right?
Jocelyne: Yeah, well, I think we wanted to be really honest, like, no one wants to read a book about how great everything was in your life. [Shireen laughs]
Monique: Yeah.
Jocelyne: What sports fans have seen of our careers is mostly the high points. I think most people understand that it's not always winning medals and all the fun stuff that they see, but there’s more adversity, I think, within our career than a lot of people understand or realize, and then adversity that we faced off the ice and how we’ve managed to deal with that and take those moments of dealing with heartbreak and loss and things not going well on the ice and how we use that to make us better people and better players. So, I think that's an important part of the process of writing the book that we definitely wanted to share those things. Going through the editing process we were encouraged…When you go through the editing process it gets very tedious reading the same pages over and over, and it's like, what else can we possibly add? You know, what’s not adding color or substance to the book in its entirety? So, we had another editor come in towards the end. Tt was very helpful for her to basically say I think you should add more here, take this out, give more here to this story. That part was very, very helpful.
Shireen: Yeah. Editors and producers are everything. But also the book feels very authentic – there's parts when, like, I didn't know that you guys didn’t make the national roster! I just automatically assumed, because I was a little surprised to read that part. I was like, wow! Those are the parts that really resonate with readers. Is that something you set out to do, or did that just happen organically?
Monique: I think it happened pretty organically and just when you set out to write something that’s about your life you wanna add in the stuff that helped shape you, and I think of the different struggles that we've been through in our lives and what’s really helped us and pushed us and going through times when we got cut from teams, even though it didn’t happen that often, when it did or times when we didn't play or were healthy scratches, those were moments that we had, those were big learning experiences for us. We grew as individuals and as teammates, as players, whatever it may be, and those were things that we really wanted to share because I think that in those moments and the tough times you really learn who you are as a person and it really shapes, I think, your outlook on certain things moving forward.
Shireen: I’ve never heard that expression healthy scratches. I think I'm gonna use that. I’ve never heard that, and that’s such a positive way, like, a growth-focused way to put something. So, we fast forward a little bit to 2017 and leading up to the worlds, was there a specific moment…Because in your book you did say, you know, for example when you talked about the hockey jerseys that were released and Nike had sort of made homage to the men's ’98 gold and not the women’s, and for the presser USA Hockey didn’t actually let in any women, and you mention how that’s just one of the things leading up to when you guys were really leaders in this campaign to raise awareness about gender equity in sport. Was there a moment that you were like, okay, we’re done? Because taking on something like USA Hockey which is really the main organization, it’s not an easy thing to do. It requires a lot of bravery here.
Jocelyne: Yeah, well, I think we illustrate it in the book, is that it’s not necessarily one glaring instance or experience that's like, okay, this is it, we’ve had it. It was an underlying consistent theme basically throughout our career and things we had heard from veterans that came before us, of feeling undervalued and unacknowledged and the Nike jersey example was very easy for people to understand, and the world championship rings example is another thing that’s very very simple to understand. I think the more frustrating part to that is in some ways many of these things were unconsciously done. They weren’t maliciously done. It was literally just not even being thought of. It’s not like, “Should we include them? No, we’re not gonna include the women.” I don't think that’s how a lot of these things happened, they just didn’t happen because nobody was thinking about the women’s program.
Monique: Which is almost worse, in a way.
Jocelyne: It is. You’re not even to the point of intentionally doing it, you’re still at the point of unintentionally and unconsciously doing it, which yes, I do think is worse. But to your question, it was multiple instances of different things happening and then when you start to get into the actual equity piece of it and trying not to get stuck on the material things, but when you find out the men’s team gets $50 a day in per diem versus the women get $15 a day in per diem, how they travel versus how you travel, their families get a family fund for a family member to go to a world championship, the women’s team has never been provided that privilege. You just kind of break these things down into, okay, it’s not equal, it’s not even close to being equal. How do we change this so that the next generation doesn’t have to deal with these problems?
Shireen: As somebody in the media who witnessed all this happen and saw the conversation, I was also really heartened by the cross-sport solidarity that you got. That must have made you feel more supported, that this is something that literally happens in every sport. Did that help at all? Did that sort of boost you, that there's people out there empathizing and saying we're with you in this?
Monique: I mean, absolutely. I think US Soccer and the WNBA, they’re pretty much a generation ahead of women’s hockey, and so when we sought out representation our lead lawyer at the time, John Langel, he represented US Soccer for 15+ years. So we actually talked to Julie Foudy from the outset and had her support and she gave us a lot of advice, and I think with social media today we’re able to learn from other sports and take lessons from other female sports and what female athletes have been able to accomplish. And I think other sports have been able to build off of what we've done or learned from our example.
But yeah, if at any point in time if what we were doing came across as selfish or greedy I don’t think we would’ve had the public support that we did, and we were coming from a place of trying to grow the game not just for the national team but for the next generation because, yes, we will benefit in the immediate short term, but we just announced our retirement so we benefitted for 2, 2 and a half years out of our 14 and a half year national team career. But ultimately what we were able to do is affect the next generation and affect the next players that come through that locker room and hopefully grow the game from a grassroots level up as well.
Shireen: And one of the things about that, and I love that you talked about the WNBA and the US women’s national team and having those conversations in women's hockey, and there are a lot of conversations that are happening and one is about racial diversity and equity in sport as well. I know your foundation does work to provide for underrepresented communities. How important is that discussion to you, as leaders on this team and arguably leaders in this sport, to really…Because women’s hockey quite frankly and in hockey in general has been lagging to a huge part in this discussion on racial equity and justice.
Jocelyne: I think for many people it’s slightly uncomfortable to step out and to be a voice, because to be honest…So, when we worked with Comcast corporate values initiatives and we started working with their internet essentials programs we were going to predominantly Black schools and we literally said to teach other, “Do these kids wanna hear from two white blonde girls?” Then we said, well, who better to be talking about equity than the people who are white and who have benefited from the different cultural norms that exist today? So, we think it's important for everybody to be a voice for positive conversation around equity, whether that's gender equity or racial equity. It’s important that everybody is a part of the conversation. Gender equity is not just a women’s problem and it’s not just the men who…“Oh, I have a daughter, now I want things to be equal,” which is a lot of the time where some of the conversations we have with men start – although it’s better than not having that conversation, it’s just a part of the bigger problem that I think our culture has.
So our foundation work, yes, it’s not just centered around creating more opportunities for girls but for under resourced communities and underprivileged families and it's much bigger than sports. For our foundation, for example, we helped equalize the lunch program in our home town, meaning that if your family qualified for free or reduced lunches the kids were getting fed but they were getting cold lunches, and so we wanted to make sure every kid no questions asked as getting a hot lunch through the school year. We helped fund that program for the school year, and so from a basic needs level, for kids to reach their full potential in school they shouldn’t have to worry about if they're getting a hot meal that day during the school day, and then they can focus on the class that they’re having. That work is very important to us and something that we’re very very passionate about.
Shireen: And those community connections, that grassroots stuff, you’re still very connected to it from what I understand. Out of all the things that you find rewarding, what has been one of the most for you? Is it increased girls in ice hockey? Is it the kids that are, you know, you get thank you letters? And for those that don’t know, April 15th in Grand Forks is actually Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux Day! So, having your own day?! Because a lot of this work is unglamorous, to hustle and to do this kind of stuff, to have like you said these uncomfortable conversations. It's actually not glamorous work, it's just work. So, what are some of the things that have been the most meaningful for you?
Monique: Well, I mean, you mentioned we have a day named after us. Because you said it I know what day it’s on, but if you would’ve asked me what day it was I wouldn’t even have had a clue. I probably would have gotten the month wrong too. But I think just seeing the impact…We do an all-girls hockey camp once a year on the western side of the state with one of our brothers, so after the Olympics I think we had 180 girls that signed up for the week, and we had girls fly in from all over the country, and so to see the excitement and to see the growth around women’s hockey, we get joy and value out of that. I think such an easy example for us is when we were working for the internet essentials program with Comcast we would go to these schools that Jocelyne was talking about and we would do laptop giveaways with these kids and along with those laptops they would get free internet access cards for 6 months, up to a year.
So you see these kids that are getting a free laptop and you would see kids that would start crying, you would see a hundred kids that would just be like, screaming, going nuts. We did a bunch of these giveaways and almost every time you're almost like trying not to cry in front of all of them because you see the impact that it's gonna have on them, because the average person you probably just assume everybody has internet access at home and the people that do assume that…Like, think if you didn’t have your phone for a day and you couldn't access your emails or you could go home and use a Fire Stick or whatever it may be. But kids, people go daily without internet access and how are you supposed to reach your full potential if you don't have something that's really a basic necessity today? So, being a part of that program was really eye-opening for us and really inspired us to really kickstart our foundation as well.
Jocelyne: Yeah, I think it’s been so impactful to do that work with Comcast and it’s inspired us to do more in our home state, because we were traveling all over the country doing events with them and we'd come home and we'd be home and then we'd go do more events in different states and it was like, okay, what are we gonna do in Grand Forks? What are we gonna do in North Dakota and in the region to make a difference? So, that work has been really inspiring and eye-opening to struggles that so many people go through.
Shireen: Those are all super important, just to give people an idea of what happens behind the scenes, like, you’re very committed to the foundation and the work you do, which I love because it’s something that I feel like is a thing with women athletes – it's never just about the sport, they're always doing something else, whether it's gender equity, whether it’s racial diversity and justice, you can't just be an athlete, you're already committed to doing other things, I think that’s just how it occurs for women in sport. So, I want to kind of pivot to a quick rapid fire question round with you both, because I mean shootouts are…You guys nailed it, right? Some of these questions are personally motivated, so bear with me. Favorite women's player of all time, in ice hockey?
Monique: Favorite women’s player? Cammi Granato.
Jocelyne: Angela Ruggiero.
Shireen: Toughest competitor in women’s hockey you’ve ever faced?
Monique: I’m gonna go Poulin, that’s an easy one.
Jocelyne: Meghan Agosta.
Shireen: That was a set-up. That question was a very specific set-up, so thank you both. [laughter]
Jocelyne: Or Szabados! I mean, come on.
Monique: Oh yeah.
Shireen: Oh Szabados, yeah. Favorite tournament you’ve ever attended?
Monique: Favorite tournament…2017 world championships.
Jocelyne: I was gonna say the Olympics. [laughs]
Monique: That too, yeah.
Shireen: Favorite brother? [laughs]
Monique: Ooh…I don’t think I’m allowed to answer that one.
Shireen: Okay.
Jocelyne: Depends why we’re calling them.
Shireen: [laughs] Okay.
Monique: If I want a good laugh I’ll call Mario, or Phil.
Shireen: Most beautiful place you’ve ever visited because of hockey?
Jocelyne: Banff, or Switzerland.
Monique: Same answer there, yeah.
Shireen: Okay. Favorite warmup song?
Jocelyne: Just Like Fire, or This Is Me from The Greatest Showman.
Monique: I like Whitney Houston, I Wanna Dance With Somebody. I love 80s music.
Shireen: Will your kids be playing ice hockey?
Monique: If they want to.
Jocelyne: I mean, yes, if they want to, but yes. Yes!
Monique: Yeah.
Shireen: [laughs] Favorite women’s team that is not ice hockey that you stan?
Jocelyne: US soccer team.
Monique: Just to be different I’m gonna say US gymnastics.
Shireen: So, I love all the answers to these questions. I wanna thank you so much for being on the show today. Can you tell us where people can get your book, where we can find your work, where our listeners can follow you on social media?
Monique: I’ll go, Jocelyne, I’ll take this one [laughs] – as we’re looking at each other who’s gonna answer. So, our book, Dare to Make History, is out. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, Target online, or you can go to your local bookseller, and then you can follow us, we have a website: lamoureuxtwins.com. We have a shared Facebook page, Monique and Jocelyne Lamoureux; we’re at Twitter @lamoureuxtwins, or we have separate Instagram accounts, that’s @jocelyneusa17 or @moniquelam7. So, that’s plenty of ways to follow along with us as we continue on in our lives.
Shireen: One last thing: if you were going to give a young girl one piece of advice in whether she feels like she can’t do it, it’s too tough, there’s not enough girls around or it’s too hard, she can’t skate properly, her puck handling is a bit weak? What’s that advice that you would give her?
Jocelyne: My best piece of advice would be to dream big, set big goals, because no one else is gonna do that for you.
Monique: For me, one of our strength coaches, she told me always: “Think it, be it.” I know a big one is if you can see it you can be it, but if you can’t think it for yourself and you can't think of yourself accomplishing something big, even if you can’t see others doing it it’ll never happen. So think it, be it.
Shireen: Awesome. Again, I wanna thank you both. Monique, bon courage with what’s coming up!
Monique: Thank you.
Shireen: Good luck to you. Hope everything goes well, healthy, and again thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down. You both are legends and I wish you the best in your retirement and moving forward with all your work.
Jocelyne: Thanks for having us.
Monique: Thank you so much.