Aerin Frankel

Women’s ice hockey has been gaining in popularity ever since the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) was launched in 2023. Today, the PWHL consists of eight teams and this summer it will expand to twelve teams. With the US women’s ice hockey winning a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Milan this year, it is an exciting time to be a female player on the ice. And one of the most lauded performances at the Olympics this past February belonged to Chappaqua’s own Aerin Frankel, the team’s goalie.

Frankel’s love affair with the ice first blossomed as a three-year-old when her parents, Peter and Deborah, took her to “public skate” sessions at the Westchester Skating Academy (WSA) in Elmsford. There was no equipment or organized hockey playing during these sessions. Her mother knew how to ice skate and came from a family of ardent NY Rangers fans. At first, her parents enrolled her in figure skating. But Frankel soon saw ice hockey games being played and wanted in on the action. She resisted the figure skating lessons and begged her parents to let her try ice hockey. They soon relented and at the age of six, Frankel started to play ice hockey for the WSA’s House League, a non-competitive entry to the sport. “The House League was kind of like an intro to hockey and I just loved it,” recalls Frankel. “I kept playing and then I played on multiple House League teams because I wanted to get better and spend more time at the rink.”

Soon Frankel was playing as the only girl on the Westchester Vipers, a travel team based out of WSA. “It was a lot of fun. I have so many memories of when I was little playing for the Westchester Vipers and making friends with all the boys on my team. They treated me just like I was one of them,” notes Frankel. To this day, Frankel still stays in touch with some of the Vipers and in fact is best friends with a former Viper, Anthony Stark who played Division 1 ice hockey for Colgate University. “He’s like a brother to me. I made so many friendships during my time with the Vipers.” She also credits coach Kevin Hagen from WSA who coached Frankel and Stark for almost a decade.

Frankel, who grew up in Hardscrabble Lake attended Roaring Brook Elementary and Bell Middle School as well as her freshman year at Horace Greeley High School. She always felt supported by her teachers. “I think all I wanted to do was to talk about hockey and to tell everyone that I was a hockey player, and that’s how I was known by most of my classmates.”

Her involvement with the sport meant a lot of sacrifices. “I missed a lot of birthday parties on the weekends, school dances and socials but I knew I had to do that to pursue my dreams with hockey.” It also meant a huge time and financial commitment for her family, but they knew how serious she was about the sport. Eventually, WSA started a girls’ ice hockey team also named the Vipers and Frankel joined that too while still playing as the only girl on her original team of the Vipers.

Playing Goalie

Deciding to play goalie, arguably the most high-pressure position on the team, wasn’t taken lightly. But something that Frankel was passionate about trying. Her parents at first encouraged her to play out of the net in other positions and only let her become goalie after three years of playing.

“Even at a young age, I loved how goalies are always in the net. You’re not constantly on and off the ice, like the other players and I just love being the last line of defense. I think the position is like an expression of my personality. I’m kind of a free-spirit, wild, adventurous person, and the position resembles that.”

Frankel credits much of her success to her parents’ support. Another difficult decision her family had to face was leaving Greeley to attend boarding school where she could pursue ice hockey more rigorously. After freshman year, Frankel attended Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Fairbault, Minnesota where she honed her skills. “This put me on the best path to play the most hockey at the highest level.” She then attended Northeastern University in Boston, where she became the most decorated NCAA ice hockey player in the school’s history while pursuing a combined major of Criminal Justice and Psychology with a minor in Spanish. In her fifth year of hockey eligibility at Northeastern, she earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership.

Today Frankel lives in Boston serving as goalie for the Boston Fleet, a PWHL team. This interview was conducted during a brief hiatus in her off-season. During the summer, she spent some time traveling with friends to Newport, the Bahamas and Florida. At the end of the summer, she is looking forward to speaking at the United States Tennis Association coaching symposium held during the US Open in New York.

Even though she will be off the ice for a few weeks, Frankel will still do interval training, yoga and biking to stay in shape. She also has a few nagging overuse injuries that she can devote more time to with physical therapy. Playing hockey non-stop during June 2025 leading up to the Olympics has been taxing. “You don’t really have time to rest during the season, because it’s just go, go, go. It’s my job to take good care of myself and train, even on the days where it’s harder or something’s bothering me. I obviously still have to show up to work which is just part of being in the professional league.”

When Frankel looks back on her journey to making the Winter Olympics, she notes that “It is an incredible honor. Making the national team in 2019 was such a surreal moment for me. To put on that USA hockey jersey and to be living out the dream I had.”

“If you had asked me 15 years ago, if I thought I would participate in the Olympics, let alone play for Team USA, I would have thought you were crazy. It has been a long time coming, but it’s just very rewarding given all the dedication to my sport and the commitment,” she continues.

Going for the Gold

Frankel believes that winning the gold medal with her team was a dream come true for her. “Having my family there beside me to celebrate it was one of the most special things. They have sacrificed so much for me to be where I am today and having them there was a full circle moment. In a career, there are many ups and downs, and I feel lucky to have the best support system always by my side.”

“I definitely felt so much love and support from back home as well. Seeing the watch parties in Westchester and receiving so many messages from prior coaches made me feel like I had so many people behind me.”

“I remember the moment we won the game I was in a bit of disbelief about what had just happened. I never lost any doubt in my teammates, but the feeling of winning that gold medal and hearing our anthem play was truly unbelievable,” she says with a hint of awe still in her voice.

While fans get to watch the Olympics for three weeks, many don’t realize that athletes like Frankel have been as she says “scratching and clawing at this Olympics to crack the roster for four years.” In USA Hockey, every year you have a world championship with the same opponents like Canada, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland competing. This November, Frankel is hopeful that she will compete in the world championship in Denmark. The player pool is bigger at the beginning of those four years (known as a quad). There’s a lot of players who get cut from the Olympic team along the way.

“The camaraderie as a team comes from all the time spent together during that quad leading up to the Olympics. You have four years of training camps, scrimmages, World Championships with a lot of ups and downs. You can’t play hockey all day every day, so you really get to know each other and spend time away from the ice.”

In addition to attending the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly (ESPYs) awards presented by ESPN this July, Frankel also went to watch the PWHL draft in Detroit to cheer on her teammates who will get drafted from the national team into the PWHL. As the PWHL expands, each team can only protect three players from being taken during expansion. Frankel’s status as a protected player means that she will remain playing for the Boston Fleet. “It’s where I love to play, and I have a lot of teammates here that I really enjoy playing with.”

Knowing that she is on the world stage, Frankel is acutely aware of what a privilege it is and how younger fans look up to her. “I’ve seen just how much an impact you can have on people, and it is really special. It’s something I don’t take lightly at all. I represent my hometown, my country, my team. It makes such a difference in people’s lives when you have meaningful interactions with them. A lot of people in our league are always eager to interact with fans and give back to our communities to help grow women’s hockey. It has grown tremendously over the past few years, but it’s still growing at this point.”

Besides spending hours on the ice, Frankel is a self-confessed foodie, and Caesar salad is her favorite food. She even has an Instagram account rating different ones which started as a passion project in 2024. The account dubbed PainbyRomaine started out small with just a few thousand followers but during the Olympics it gained traction and today she has over 70,000 followers. “I get sent a lot of croutons and salad dressing,” she quips.

But there are two local food items named in her honor that she can’t wait to try on her next visit to Westchester. The Hometown Hero consisting of romaine, hot honey, Buffalo chicken cutlet, crouton crumbles and Caesar salad dressing wrapped in a parmesan blanket is available at Bobo’s Cafe in Chappaqua and Rocky’s Deli in Millwood added a chicken Caesar wrap with bacon and croutons to celebrate her success. We are hoping they remain as menu items as she clenches another gold medal for Team USA at the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.