Emma Bendrat is a 17-year-old high school student-athlete living in Granby who has played in state and national championships.

Bendrat said she was first introduced to hockey in 2016 through her older brother, who played for the Fraser Valley Hockey Association. Prior to picking up a hockey stick, Emma had been doing figure skating, so she was no stranger to the ice rink. By 2018, Emma already had her first state championship win under her belt in the association’s 10U division.

“We won when I was 14 — we won state — and our coach is like, ‘We’re going to regionals!’ And I was like, ‘What is that?'” Bendrat said.

Then 2021, the USA Hockey National Championships took place in Denver, and Bendrat’s team took third after an intense bracket involving a tie-breaking shootout.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that we would take third in a national championship,” Bendrat said.

Today, she plays for two hockey teams in the Denver area: Chatfield High School and the Foothills Hockey Association’s girls program. She often starts her days at 3:30 or 4:30 a.m. to head to morning practice four times a week in Denver, which usually takes place from 5-7 a.m.

In February, the Foothills Hockey Association’s Foothills Lady Flyers were crowned state champions in the 19U AA girls league. Most recently, with the Chatfield Chargers, she was in Irvine, California, to compete in the 2025 Chipotle-USA Hockey High School National Championships, which took place March 16-30. While the results were not what the team wanted, she was able to score the only goal for her team during the tournament.

Bendrat also gives back to the local Grand County hockey community by volunteering as a coach. Over the past four years, she has been coaching the 10U and 12U teams with the Fraser Valley Hockey Association.

Bendrat’s mom, Gail Bendrat, said her daughter’s favorite thing to do is “coach the younger players at Fraser.”

“She’s worked really hard,” Gail Bendrat wrote in an email.

At one point, Bendrat was considering quitting hockey but changed her mind after she began coaching.

“You can have the best time, because you can have these kids who are struggling, and you help them, like, get a drill right, and they’re like, ‘Wow, that was so cool. Thank you. I never knew I could do that,'” she said.

She said working with younger players reminds her that hockey is meant to be fun.

“I saw how much fun they were having. I kind of remembered that it’s OK to have fun and maybe not take it too seriously all the time,” Bendrat said.

From her own experience, Bendrat said her all-girls teams don’t receive as much support when compared to their male counterparts. She said her team doesn’t get as much access to school equipment, time on the ice or access to certain school facilities as their male counterparts. Girls ice hockey is not recognized by the Colorado High School Activities Association as a sanctioned sport.

Bendrat said she’d love to see the sport grow in Colorado and offer more opportunities for girls. During her time as a player, she said she often sees athletes leave the state for better hockey opportunities in other regions.

“I would love to see people be able to stay in Colorado,” Bendrat said.

For Bendrat, she said the hockey community and team spirit has impacted her life positively. Some of her favorite memories include attending a hockey camp in Minnesota with her friends and getting to play in Canada, where the team participated in a flag ceremony.

“When we played in Canada, we got our butts handed to us. But it was OK because the whole thing — the whole experience — was really fun,” she said.

Scoring in various championships offers other favorite memories.

“That’s a fun memory because it’s always that game where you don’t think you’re gonna score at all, you end up scoring a lot. I think that’s funny,’ Bendrat said.

Bendrat will graduate next year with an associates degree from Colorado Early College, an online school, and has tentative plans to attend college to study interior design. While she doesn’t plan on playing hockey at the collegiate level, Bendrat said she would be interested in joining a club team and playing for fun in the future.