At 15, Raleigh’s Mary Derrenbacher may be the best hockey player her age ... anywhere

The medal is heavy, just uncomfortably so, and Mary Derrenbacher was trying to avoid putting it on until the last second. She said there was some debate among her teammates whether it’s actually real gold — they’re gold-plated, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation — but there’s no question the thing isn’t light, especially around her 15-year-old neck.

But Bally Sports wanted her to wear it on television, so as Derrenbacher waited next to the Bally set on the concourse of PNC Arena on Sunday afternoon, her father Chris kept the medal in his pocket until the time came to put it over her head and tuck the ribbon under the collar of her USA Hockey pullover.

This is the literal weight on her shoulders as she follows a path no one from the Triangle has yet taken, a born Carolina Hurricanes fan whose slick skating, wicked shot and love of the game have made her one of the best hockey players her age in the world.

In January, Derrenbacher was the youngest player on the U.S. team that won gold at the World Women’s Under-18 Championships in Switzerland. A day after being honored by the Hurricanes on Sunday, she was headed back to Shattuck-St. Mary’s, the Minnesota prep school and hockey powerhouse where she went two years ago to further her career — and discovered just how talented she really was.

“I always played with boys and they were obviously better than me, so I didn’t think I was too good,” Derrenbacher said. “Once I switched over to playing against girls and went to boarding school, I was kind of like, yeah, I’m good. And then the USA Hockey stuff only made it more like that.”

While she was home for spring break, she got to sound the Hurricanes’ warning siren and go on the pregame show with her former coach, Bally broadcaster and former Hurricanes forward Shane Willis, as her parents watched from next to the stage and her grandparents stood anonymously among the fans lining the ropes.

And sometimes, she could feel the weight of everything she’d earned on the ice around her neck.

She’s getting used to the attention, the questions, the television cameras. Greatness still comes at a price. For Derrenbacher, it meant leaving her family and friends behind to chase her hockey dreams. But her future is limitless, and the opportunities that stretch out before her are priceless.

College hockey? The PHWL, the new women’s pro league in the Northeast that finally appears sustainable? The Olympics? All of it.

“I told her dad years ago, when Mary goes to the Olympics, he and I will be going,” said Willis, who coached Derrenbacher for several years in the Junior Hurricanes program alongside his son Laken. “In my mind, I knew Mary would be a superstar in the U.S. national program, at a very young age and for a very long time.”

This is not a transplant story, not the daughter of a transient NHL player who did a short stint in Triangle youth hockey. Derrenbacher is pure Raleigh, a lifelong Hurricanes fan who has been going to games “since before I was born.” Her father Chris went to East Carolina and Campbell. Her mother Christy grew up in Roxboro and went to Meredith.

Before they had kids, they had Hurricanes season tickets in the lower bowl. When they needed to buy more, they moved up to Section 312, where they’ve been ever since — and sat Sunday after Mary’s spin on the siren. Even that felt a little different.

“That’s your daughter?” one passing fan asked Christy at one point, as Mary was being escorted along the concourse. “Congratulations!”

It wasn’t the first time Mary had been a part of pregame Hurricanes festivities, as she’d been the youth player on the ice before playoff games in 2019 and 2022. It was, however, the first time she’d been the center of attention, waving to the crowd as she was shown on the scoreboard. She even seemed a bit taken aback when a Hurricanes in-game producer handed her a personalized No. 13 jersey after she was finished with the siren.

She doesn’t turn 16 until September. Her growing celebrity will take some getting used to.

“One of my favorite things about Mary is her humility,” said Ellie Williams, her coach at Shattuck. “She doesn’t walk around like she’s on the under-18 team. She does walk around in the weight room like she’s on the under-18 team, because her habits suggest that she is. But not her attitude toward her teammates.”

‘That’s how the buzz started’

Derrenbacher wanted to play hockey because her older brother Jack, now a freshman at Virginia Tech, played hockey, but she was no prodigy. The first time Derrenbacher put on skates, at the Garner Ice House, Jack came running back into the locker room.

“You need to come get her,” he told his parents. “She’s falling down all over the place.”

She got better.

“What jumped out to me right away was how great of a skater she was at a younger age,” Willis said. “Anyone who watches her, that’s what everyone notices. The rest of her skill kind of takes over from there.”

In a way, Derrenbacher benefited from the Triangle’s (relatively) small hockey world. She was good enough to play for elite boys teams coached by former NHL players, Willis and Justin Williams, alongside their sons — and at that time, six and seven years ago, the girls’ side of the Junior Hurricanes program was still growing into what it is today.

She had a trailblazing mentor on speed dial in Alyssa Gagliardi, the Triangle’s first women’s pro player, who also played at Shattuck. And while it became clear she’d have to leave the Triangle eventually, and spent her summers commuting to Boston to play on an elite girls club team even in the depths of COVID, she made the utmost of what the hockey scene here could offer a young player.

“Because we didn’t have that (girls) option, and she’s the only girl on a boys team and fitting in seamlessly, that turned peoples’ heads,” Willis said. “The tournaments we go to, there are always people watching. That’s how the buzz started.”

Her inevitable departure for Shattuck came suddenly. The plan had been for Derrenbacher to go there for high school, starting in ninth grade in the summer of 2023. Late in the summer of 2022, another player dropped out. There was an opening. It was hers if she wanted it. And the timing was right: The boys she’d played with for years, matched herself against on the ice and in the weight room, were starting to get bigger and stronger.

“We wanted to let her decide first, to see what she wanted to do,” Christy Derrenbacher said. “Once she decided she wanted to go, then we had to figure out whether we were going to let her.”

It’s rare for Shattuck to take eighth-graders at all, especially from an area not known for pumping out hockey players. Those coaches hear about a lot of big fish from small ponds who don’t turn out to be good enough. And it has to be the right fit, the right player, the right family — someone capable of being the youngest girl at the school, the youngest player on her team.

But Williams, the Shattuck under-16 coach, had seen Derrenbacher play and trusted the opinion of Gagliardi, a former Shattuck teammate. By the time came to extend the offer to Derrenbacher, whatever questions Williams might have had about a kid from North Carolina had long ago been answered.

“When you say a kid’s good for North Carolina, you’re not thinking Mary Derrenbacher good,” Williams said. “Probably a decent Division III player, is what you might assume. Mary came for a spring tournament here and when I saw her there, I was like, ‘Holy cow, this kid is good.’”

While others around her had spotted her potential and talent long before, her arrival at Shattuck, surrounded by other elite players, opened Derrenbacher’s own eyes. These were some of the best players a year or two older than her anywhere, from Minnesota and California and Europe, all chasing the same dream, and she was as good as any of them and better than most.

Because of her mobility, the Junior Hurricanes used her on defense, but she always played forward against girls and her future is as a pace-pushing, goal-scoring left wing, with a quick release and wicked shot.

“She’s scored some goals like, zing!” Williams said. “I can’t imagine her being a D.”

Her first weekend, she had three game-winning or game-changing goals, arriving on the scene like “a little bomb,” Williams said. This season, she’s the third-leading scorer on the top-ranked girls under-16 team in the country. She has measured herself against her peers, and found common ground.

“It’s crazy how much dedication everyone around there has,” Derrenbacher said. “You’re on the ice two or three hours a day, in the gym every day. It’s crazy to see how much other people want to get better every day. It was eye-opening to see. There are so many other girls who are just as dedicated.

“Shattuck is kind of what you make of it. There’s always ice open, it’s very optional to do the extra, but almost everyone does the extra. You practice every day. There’s skills you can go to after school. There’s always open gym. It’s as much as you can handle.”

Last summer, Derrenbacher was one of 36 under-18 players selected to participate in USA Hockey’s Women’s National Festival in Lake Placid, where the youngest players in the program mingle with collegians and Olympians. When it came time to select the team that would go to Switzerland, Derrenbacher was one of three players picked born in 2008, and the youngest of them all.

There were three older Shattuck players on the U.S. under-18 team. All three play for Shattuck’s elite prep team, two levels up from the under-16s where Derrenbacher plays. But she started the tournament on the top line, with the team’s two best players. She scored in the opening game. She never looked back.

Her ceiling continues to get higher. And higher.

“It’s one thing to be able to say those things, but Mary puts herself on the track of actually being one of those individuals,” Williams said. “Being that person is a different animal. That is your day to day. What makes Mary great is she’s going to be in the weight room to lift at 6:15 a.m. (Tuesday). But on Wednesday, we don’t have to lift as a team, and she’s going to be there. And her teammates will be there because they know she will be. Her day-to-day commitment to being her best doesn’t waver.”

Already a role model

This is the kind of career trajectory you see in Canada or in Minnesota or Massachusetts or Michigan, old-time hockey states used to churning out phenoms. Among Shattuck’s most famous products: Sidney Crosby, who left Nova Scotia to spend a year there preparing for an NHL career that would begin the moment he was drafted at 18.

To try to put it in Triangle basketball terms, Derrenbacher is like John Wall was at 15, the kind of player who stands out instantly among peers, whose potential is blinding. The biggest difference between them is Wall never had to leave; basketball prospects come here to hone their games. In hockey, it’s the opposite, which means Derrenbacher bears the hopes and dreams of not only herself and her family, but an entire generation of girls hockey players in the Triangle.

When she tried out for the U.S. Under-18 team, she wondered if geography would hold her back.

She’s proving it cannot.

“I knew there was a possibility to make it, but being from the Southeast, I wasn’t sure if they would take anyone,” Derrenbacher said. “I was just there doing my best, hopefully trying to make it.”

She can’t even drive yet, and she’s already a role model. As Derrenbacher waited on the PNC concourse for her Bally appearance, young girls seemed to find her, as if drawn toward her by forces they couldn’t understand. The medal came out of her dad’s pocket and went around her neck. Some wanted photos. One wanted to hold the medal. Most knew who she was already.

Then a bigger group of girls her age came by, and they definitely knew Derrenbacher. Knew her well. Hugs and congratulations were exchanged. They were from the Junior Hurricanes program, and they were being honored by the Hurricanes on Sunday as well, for winning the Southeast Region and qualifying for USA Hockey’s Tier I Under-16 Girls national championships. This time, Derrenbacher was doing the congratulating.

That tournament will be held in Florida next month. It’s almost certain that the Junior Hurricanes will be the 16th and final seed. The top-ranked under-16 team in the country is Shattuck-St. Mary’s, which lost in last year’s title game. Odds are, they’ll be in the same group. They’ll play each other in the first game.

If there’s another medal in Derrenbacher’s immediate future, she’s going to have to go up against the friends she had to leave behind to get it.

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