Donna Kaufman Has Spent More Than Five Decades Volunteering Her Time to Hockey
Donna Kaufman has committed her life to hockey.
She’s volunteered for local associations, has run two different rinks and now serves on USA Hockey’s Board of Directors where she serves as vice president and chair of the Membership Council.
Before moving to her current role with USA Hockey, she was also spent time as part of the organization’s Junior Council.
Kaufman also wore many hats for the Tacoma Junior Hockey Association and then the Pacific Northwest Amateur Hockey Association, serving as vice president and then president from 1997 to 2005.
It’s more than five decades of service to hockey that continues today.
It all started when she met her future husband, Rob, who was a hockey player at Ohio State when the couple started dating. They eventually raised three hockey-playing sons, who all played at various levels of college hockey, which pushed Kaufman deeper and deeper into the sport.
For most hockey parents, the focus is generally on one team, or maybe even one organization, and typically lasts as long as their child plays youth hockey. For Kaufman, however, it evolved beyond a family commitment rather quickly.
“It was learning how quickly we can worry and help the face behind the facemask,” Kaufman said about what inspired her to start volunteering.
For Kaufman, that means the ability to help young people acquire the life skills hockey brings.
“It really is a vehicle to teach them and prepare them for life,” Kaufman said. “To be able to teach them how to set goals, how to deal with failure, and how to deal with other difficulties. Maybe dealing with something tough in hockey, that’s how you are prepared to deal with difficult times at work as an adult, all of those skills from hockey you can weave into life.”
That meant volunteering to help as many youth hockey players as possible for Kaufman.
She served as the Tacoma Junior Hockey Association secretary, treasurer, and president between 1992 and 1996. During that time, she and her husband also built the Puget Sound Hockey Center in Tacoma, a facility that was open until 2016, before the Kaufmans focused on building their current rink, the Tacoma Twin Rinks.
Closing the old rink and moving to a new one was a good embodiment of how Kaufman has embraced volunteering in the hockey world; she’s always on the lookout to help as many people as possible.
The Puget Sound Hockey Center was effectively a rink inside a free-span metal building, and while it served its purpose, Kaufman saw an opportunity to do more when an old indoor soccer building became available. And so, the Tacoma Twin Rinks were built with double the ice space and enhanced facilities for the local community to enjoy.
“It was always the plan to do something more, move at some point into something bigger,” Kaufman said. “Sometimes you have to just wait for that opportunity.”
Between her various roles with USA Hockey at the national and local levels, and her role managing a rink, Kaufman has gone from the person introduced by the sport through her husband to the person who introduces the sport en masse to others.
Being based in the Pacific Northwest, there’s been a groundswell of hockey popularity in recent years at an NHL level because of the Seattle Kraken.
More than two decades before the NHL club arrived, Kaufman was part of helping grow the hockey community in Washington.
“It’s been here, the history is strong, and the people that have worked hard to help grow the sport, the NHL team has just put a good microscope on what type of hockey area this already was,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman looks at her locale as a strong example of what the sport can provide to everyone.
“It’s a community, a place where young people can learn and grow,” she said. “And that’s been one of the most important pieces for me.”
It’s why, even after five decades, she keeps finding ways to volunteer and make sure those efforts continue.
Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.
Source: usahockey.com