Laila Edwards, middle, the primary Black lady to go well with up for Team USA girls’s Olympic hockey, poses for a photograph together with her dad and mom, Charone Gray-Edwards, left, and Robert Edwards, proper, in her childhood dwelling in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
It wasn’t straightforward for Laila Edwards’ dad and mom, lacking a lot of their daughter’s early life growing into girls’s hockey Olympian away from her roots in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Thanks to an outpouring of donations, together with a significant push from the hometown NFL brother tandem of Travis and Jason Kelce, they are going to be making the journey to be a part of Edwards making her Olympic debut on the Milan Cortina Games subsequent week.
A GoFundMe drive launched shortly after Edwards was named to the U.S. roster this month had generated greater than $59,000 by way of Wednesday. The quantity surpassed the purpose of $50,000, and has the Edwardses planning to deliver up to 14 members of their quick family, from maternal grandmother Ernestine Gray to Laila’s nephew Shiloh.
“Oh my goodness,” mom Charone Gray-Edwards stated this week. “I was going to find words to describe the gratitude and appreciation. But I haven’t yet.”
Said father Robert Edwards: “We’re humbled by it.”
The significance isn’t misplaced on Laila Edwards, who left dwelling at 13 to attend the Bishop Kearney Selects Academy in Rochester, New York, earlier than transferring on to Wisconsin, the place she is finishing her senior season for the top-ranked Badgers.
“Obviously, my name’s on the roster, but I feel like my whole family made it to the Olympics,” Edwards advised The Associated Press throughout a Zoom name selling Downy Rinse. “All the sacrifices they’ve made, the things they’ve done to get me here, my parents, my siblings, I’m so grateful. And for them to get to come and share the experience is going to be really special.”
Edwards, who celebrated her twenty second birthday on Sunday, is taken into account the longer term face of girls’s hockey and can develop into the primary Black feminine hockey participant to characterize the U.S. on the Olympics. She’s a forward-turned-defender, and at 6-foot-1 and 195 kilos has pace and play-making means galore.
Though she’s spent a lot of her life away from dwelling, Edwards cherished rising up in Cleveland and rooting for LeBron James and the Kelces, Kansas City Chiefs tight finish Travis and retired Philadelphia Eagles middle Jason.
She additionally obtained to know Blake Bolden, who’s from Euclid, Ohio. Bolden is now a scout for the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and was the primary Black participant to compete within the National Women’s Hockey League.
“Cleveland is my home, and it means everything to me,” stated Edwards, who was dubbed by her U.S. teammates because the “Queen of Cleveland” following a U.S.-Canada sport performed there in November.
Though grateful for all of the help the GoFundMe drive acquired, Edwards was wowed by the Kelce brothers. They not solely contributed $10,000, however Travis Kelce reached out to present recommendation.
“He was just saying, everyone’s got my back. He’s rooting for me,” she stated. “They didn’t have to do that, but they did. And I’m really grateful.”
Gray-Edwards was awed by the help from folks she didn’t know.
“I was in Wisconsin this weekend and people are coming up to me saying, ‘I didn’t have much but I donated,’” she stated. “And I’m like, ‘You don’t understand, every dollar counted. Every dollar.’”
The preliminary plan is to use no matter cash is left over in giving again to the group, whether or not it’s offering hockey tools or free ice time.
“We really want to honor the money that’s been given to us,” Edwards stated.