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‘We’ll beg her to come back’
Team USA hockey superstar Laila Edwards celebrated Olympic gold alongside her family on Thursday – thanks to a huge helping hand from Travis and Jason Kelce.
Jason and Kylie Kelce were in the stands in Milan to see the US come from behind to secure a dramatic 2-1 overtime win against bitter rivals Canada. Edwards had an assist for the first of her team’s two goals.
The 21-year-old is the first Black female hockey player to represent the US at the Olympics but her family was only able to watch after an outpouring of donations on GoFundMe.
The biggest contribution – worth $10,000 – came from the Kelce brothers who, like Edwards, are from Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
The fundraiser allowed 10 family members – including her 91-year-old grandmother Ernestine Gray – and four friends to travel from the US. Others paid their own way to Milan Cortina to see Edwards’ golden Olympic debut.
Ahead of Thursday’s final against Canada, the 21-year-old said having her family in Italy for the Games ‘means everything to me.’
Team USA hockey superstar Laila Edwards (L) celebrated Olympic gold alongside her family
Left to right, Edwards’ cousin, aunt, grandmother, brother, mother, and father at the Games
Travis and Jason Kelce donated to a GoFundMe to help Edwards’ family make the trip
Members of Edwards’ family are pictured in the stands during the semifinal against Sweden
‘They helped me get here and make this team and achieve my dream, so it means a lot,’ she said.
The Edwards family, including her parents and four siblings, set up the fundraising page in a bid to raise $50,000.
Nearly 650 donations later, the page has reached $61,815, with money still pouring in this week. The top donation was $10,000 and it was made anonymously.
But Edwards revealed it came from the Kelces. Among those to make the trip were Edwards’ parents, aunt, cousin, older brother and elderly grandmother.
‘As she comes [on to the ice], she’s looking around,’ Gray, 91, told The Associated Press earlier this week. ‘I say: “I won’t do anything to distract her.” Then she did see me and I wave to her and then she waved back.’
The Kelce brothers have been fans of Edwards since 2023, when she became the first Black player to make the US senior women’s national team. The NFL legends gave her a shoutout on their popular podcast, New Heights.
‘I thought, ‘I’ll just message them, thanking them, they’ll never see it,’ she recalled after hearing their podcast comments. ‘And then Travis and I had a full conversation over DM, and that was super cool… he was a really down-to-earth, humble guy who was super supportive and had really good things to say.’
Edwards added: ‘They shouted me out again recently for making the Olympic team!’
Generosity from the Kelces and other Cleveland Heights locals is another example of how the tight-knit town operates, her parents said, even though their daughter moved away at a young age.
In the dramatic win over Canada, Edwards had an assist for the first of USA’s two goals
The fundraiser allowed 10 family members and four friends to travel from the US to Italy
Kelce and his older brother Jason gave Edwards a shoutout on their New Heights podcast
Edwards is considered the future face of women’s hockey and on Thursday she became an Olympic champion.
But her parents weren’t sure the entire family would be able to make the journey when she called them a month before the Olympics to say she’d been chosen for the team.
They could cover the costs for two people, but the full family roster – all of whom have supported her over the years – would have been far too expensive. And they hadn’t booked early flights or locked in cheaper hotel rates for fear of jinxing her.
‘We had to start talking about how to get money,’ her mother Charone Gray-Edwards said. ‘Who would go? How would we afford it?’
The family is accustomed to watching her from afar. When Edwards was 13, she left home to attend the Bishop Kearney Selects Academy in Rochester, New York, before moving on to University of Wisconsin, where she is playing her senior season for the top-ranked Badgers.
The general consensus is that Edwards will be selected in the top three of the Professional Women´s Hockey League draft in June, along with Wisconsin teammate Caroline Harvey and Minnesota’s Abbey Murphy.
