“At first the guys were very cautious when they discovered that I was a female player,” says Choa Choi, a South Korean hockey player. “‘Oh it’s a girl’ they would say, and they did not want to steal the puck—basically I could do whatever I wanted.” But the unequal treatment on the ice did not last long as Choi’s performance quickly bested many of her male counterparts. “When I started to play more aggressively, they realized that they did not need to play any different.”
She is no stranger to standing out on the ice. “When I first went to the states to attend high school, they had never had a player from Asia on the ice hockey team,” says Choi. “The reason I chose the sport was because I wanted to prove something.”
The short documentary, CHOA, follows Choi as she pursues her passions both on and off the rink. The film was a collaboration between UIC Yonsei University and filmmakers Nils Clauss and Adam Hobbs.
To see more work from the filmmakers visit their websites, nilsclauss.com and adamhobbs.tv.
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