The Phoenix defenseman who once nearly quit the sport is now heading to Team USA
Milena Sobie was sitting down to dinner with her parents in Ohio when her phone lit up with an email on September 22nd. No subject line. Just a name in the sender field: Dan Brennan.
“I literally threw my phone on the table, and I walked away,” she said.
The women’s sled hockey player grabbed her parents, told them an email had come in and then the three of them sat down together to read it. Her eyes moved ahead of the text. She saw her name near the bottom of the message before she’d finished reading it.
“I could not stop smiling,” she said. She called everyone she knew, coaches included, before the night was out.
Full Circle
Two years ago, Sobie was in the middle of tryouts in Verona, Wis., opening up about trading her track scholarship for one in sled hockey. She made the U.S. women’s national sled hockey team as an alternate back in 2024. This time, she made the roster outright.
“It means a lot,” Sobie said. “I feel like it just shows that the adjustments I’ve made, the training I’ve done, in comparison to what I did before 2024, it just all added up, and now in 2026 it showed on the ice.”
She said she’s still learning, even at this level, and isn’t in a hurry to stop.
“I’m glad they’re giving me an opportunity to play. It’s not every day you make Team USA. Genuinely, I’m so excited,” Sobie said.
Looking back at that first tryout doesn’t sting the way it might.
“I was just having fun,” she said. “And even this tryout, I had so much fun. I play my best when I’m having fun, and I just felt so confident. Everything with my sled was good. I got along with all the girls; we played well together.”
She said this year’s field caught even some returning players off guard.
“A lot of us knew who was on the team, and we figured, ‘OK, they’re going to stay on the team,’” Sobie said. “But then you get there, and there’s all these young girls who are insanely fast.”
This year’s roster spot, she said, had to be earned.
“It wasn’t handed to you. You had to play hard. You had to show that you put in the work before the tryout,” Sobie said.
Back on Home Ice
Just one day after learning she’d made the roster, Sobie was on the ice in Phoenix, practicing with her club team, the Phoenix Coyotes Sled Hockey team — an adult, largely male roster she trains with regularly and credits with sharpeni ng her game ahead of tryouts. Her teammates’ reaction that day was equal parts pride and ribbing.
“The guys here have always treated me so kindly. They’ve never put me down — they knew I could do it,” she said. “Now it’s just jokes, like, ‘Well, as a national player, I think you need to be able to do this,’”
She calls the group “a big group of brothers.” Training alongside players faster, stronger and bigger than her, she said, prepared her for the level of competition she saw at tryouts.
Raising Her Game
Making the roster hasn’t slowed her down. If anything, it’s sped her up.
“It makes me want to train harder,” Sobie said.
At tryouts, she found herself taking mental notes on skills her new national teammates used.
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’d be so cool to learn how to puck-handle while you fell down. [tip over] Or to go around the net, stop on a dime and shoot.”
She’s planning more cardio, lifting and ice time and further adjustments to her sled. As a defenseman, she’s also looking forward to a very specific matchup — covering Kelsey DiClaudio, the tournament’s leading scorer across all three days of tryouts, now as a teammate rather than as an opponent.
“That’s your dream target, to be able to defend the highest-scoring female in the U.S., or in the world, to be honest,” Sobie said.
Decision Validated
The timeline for the University of Arizona’s planned collegiate sled hockey program, which prompted Sobie to move her athletic scholarship from track and field to sled hockey, remains unchanged — still targeted for 2028, with construction on the rink on schedule. She said her selection to Team USA validates the decision.
“It’s not a scholarship that’s handed to everyone, because technically it’s not a sport,” she said. “Being able to make Team USA really defends my whole reasoning behind switching. I wanted to focus on one sport, which I’ve had a really hard time doing my whole life.”
Looking Ahead
Asked what she’d tell the version of herself who nearly walked away from hockey before the 2024 tryout, Sobie paused before answering.
“Don’t be too harsh on yourself,” she said. “A lot of these adaptive sports, you get started off in loaner gear, and it’s hard to see how far you can take it because it’s so hard to adjust. It’s called adaptive sports because you have to adapt.”
Next up for Sobie is an October development camp in Wisconsin to build chemistry and set lineups, followed by a trip to Australia in late November.
She credited the encouragement she got as an alternate with pushing her to lean further into the sport.
“Trust yourself. Trust your talent, trust your work ethic,” Sobie said. “If you’re the hardest worker in the room, it’ll always show.”
As of this article’s publication, USA Hockey has not yet released the full roster for the U.S. Women’s National Sled Hockey Team. Several athletes, including Sobie, have been notified individually and have begun sharing the news themselves.
Sports ‘N Spokes will follow up with the complete roster once it is officially announced.