When Sophia Villanueva committed to the University of Minnesota Duluth in March of 2025, many Bulldog fans likely didn’t bat an eye at recruiting a goaltender who is listed as being from Appleton, Wisconsin, considering that a large portion of the roster is typically made up of skaters from the MN/WI area.

In fact, there were seven Minnesotans on the UMD squad in 2024-25 (eight if you count Nina Steigauf who appeared in two games at the start of the season) and two Wisconsinites. But although the commitment graphic that Villanueva posted to her social media says ‘Appleton, Wisconsin’ - which is where she is living now - she has truly grown up and played hockey all over the country and is excited to bring a southern style of play to the Bulldogs lineup this fall.

Villanueva was actually born in San Antonio, Texas - so definitely nowhere near Wisconsin. Her father served in the army for many years so the family has moved around quite a bit. They spent some time in San Antonio, where Sophia was born, then moved to South Korea for a little while, then made their way back to the United States and settled in Colorado Springs for a handful of years - which is where her hockey journey began.

Colorado obviously has ice hockey programs but it isn’t necessarily a hockey hotbed and since neither of Sophia’s parents were hockey players she didn’t actually become exposed to the sport or find an interest in it until she was around age 10 when she brought home a flyer from school advertising to try roller hockey.

“At the time, I was kind of that kid who played every sport but never really loved one … my mom joked and said she thought it would last five minutes and then I’d be done but I fell in love with it and within a couple of months became a goalie,” said Villanueva about her hockey beginnings in an interview with Clean Sheet Hockey. She had to give up playing two other sports in order to give hockey a try but she said ‘yes’ and the rest is history.

After living in Colorado Springs for a handful of years, Sophia and her family then moved to El Paso, Texas, which is where she spent the most time growing up. When most people think of El Paso, which is located just east of the state of New Mexico and just north of the Mexican border and the city of Ciudad Juarez, most aren’t going to think that there is any ice hockey being played there, but there certainly is. El Paso has a North American Hockey League team, the El Paso Rhinos, and they have a youth program as well (the El Paso Hockey Association), but it’s still certainly a non-traditional hockey market.

“If you say El Paso, Texas, nobody thinks they have ice hockey, but they do,” she joked.

Although the El Paso area had hockey programs for Villanueva to compete on, there still weren’t too many resources available for her to take her game to the next level.

“I didn’t have a goalie coach until I was 14 so it was pure compete and just me figuring it out, so a lot of my game is just having that hard compete for everything … that’s why I love goaltending so much, it’s the one position in hockey where you get to compete harder than forwards and defense do, to an extent.”

(Contributed Photo - Villanueva playing in net for El Paso during a youth hockey game)

It took a lot of sacrifice for Sophia and her family to find and attain the resources to further develop her game. She ended up finding a good fit for what she wanted out in Arizona, so for a while, Sophia’s mom was driving her to practices and games where she competed with a 14U boys team. For context - it’s about a three-hour drive from El Paso to the Arizona border and a six-hour drive from El Paso to the Phoenix area, so there were a lot of hours spent in the car just to get ice time there.

After a while, Villanueva did end up billeting in Arizona though and she wound up joining the Arizona Kachinas 19U girls team as a freshman in high school. She was just a 14/15-year-old competing against girls that were multiple years older. The Kachinas program was fairly new at the time and the team had to do some fairly extensive travel at times just to play games since there aren’t many girls (or boys!) hockey programs in the southwest United States but Sophia and her squad made it work and she continued to round out her game as a goaltender.

While the Villanueva family was living in El Paso, Sophia’s mother earned her PhD in Business and she ended up accepting a job as a professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Her mom then moved up to Wisconsin while her father was finishing up being stationed in Texas. Knowing that Wisconsin, and the midwest in particular, had more hockey opportunities than the southwest, Sophia moved up to Wisconsin with her mom and ended up playing a season with the Minnesota Ice Cougars triple-A team.

After one season there, Villanueva wasn’t necessarily getting the recruiting attention that she was hoping for and she wanted to make a change to try and chase her dream of playing college hockey. The netminder had a connection with Mike Stanaway from NCSA (and his brother, Jim Stanoway, is a goaltending coach in the Appleton area who knows Sophia), and Mike told her about a brand new 19U girls hockey program starting up on the east coast - the Connecticut Jr. Rangers 19U AAA team. She said yes to the opportunity and moved out to Stamford for the inaugural 2024-25 season.

“For me, my biggest struggle was that I was moving and had to switch teams, so if I picked up any interest [from a collegiate program], even if I kept in contact, a lot of times it was getting lost because I switched teams and wasn’t playing the same schedule every year, wasn’t going to the same showcases, so I struggled to keep colleges interested,” she said about the recruiting process and her decision to move out east.

Many of the other girls on the brand new team in Connecticut were in the same situation as Villanueva and were from all over the U.S. and Canada and were hoping to chase their dreams of playing college hockey. Sophia and her teammates lived in apartments in downtown Stamford and were doing online schooling, which wasn’t new to Sophia as she had been doing online classes since the Covid-19 pandemic.

(Contributed Photo - Villanueva competing for the CT Jr. Rangers)

“It is very different having played hockey in the Midwest-area and having played on the East Coast, that Southwest/West region for hockey, it’s worlds apart it’s so different, but it’s so much fun,” said Villanueva, who has experienced playing the sport in so many regions of the United States and learned about how it’s played differently in each of those places.

“I call Midwest/East Coast hockey ‘pretty hockey’, they want to pass all the time and want to make pretty plays. You go down to Arizona/Texas/California and they’re not playing that type of hockey. They’re playing a lot like the Panthers and they’re hitting everybody, they’re going into corners, board battles, they’re competing really hard, there’s nothing pretty about it but it works and it’s growing,” she said about the differences between all of the teams she has played on.

Competing in Connecticut over the past season, Villanueva had a lot more resources that she could take advantage of and she had a lot of exposure being in a region with plenty of college hockey programs that could scout her at games, tournaments and showcases. That doesn’t mean that the recruiting process was easy though as she still had to send out lots of emails with game video/film to various coaches around the nation.

Villanueva was earning a good bit of Division III interest over the past year from plenty of good schools but she was hoping to receive some offers from Division I programs. Towards the end of the season she was even considering taking a gap year in 2025-26 and playing one more year of triple-A hockey to try and garner more interest but that’s when she started to get the recruiting she was hoping for as she suddenly had a rush of interest from teams such as Lindenwood, Sacred Heart and eventually Minnesota Duluth.

“UMD was kind of unique because Mike Stanaway’s brother, Jim Stanaway, has a relationship with the assistant coach at UMD, Justin Grant, and he was talking to Justin and they were looking for goalies and Jim gave him my number and that’s how it started,” Villanueva said about how she became in contact with the Bulldogs.

She then worked hard to get a lot of good game film to show UMD and the other Division I schools that she can be a high-caliber goaltender who can compete at the highest level of college hockey. The Jr. Rangers program she was with even got her ice time with their USPHL Premier boys team in two scrimmages against a junior team from China to show that she is the real deal.

Then one day Sophia and her parents got on a zoom call with the Minnesota Duluth coaching staff and she was offered a spot on the team for 2025-26.

“I think all three of our jaws dropped at the same time,” Sophia said about that moment.

“They’re playing that hockey where they’re gonna go battle hard in the corner. They’re gonna take that extra step to make a play. The ‘not pretty’ hockey,” said the Wisconsin resident about why she chose the Bulldogs in the end over the other schools that were pursuing her. “It was pretty clear that the coaches and the players cared and they worked hard for each other and that’s what I was looking for … a team that’s going to work for each other and is gonna play that hard hockey and isn’t afraid to work and love the work that they’re doing.”

So although she isn’t living in the southwest part of the United States anymore, the competitive, gritty style of play that UMD brings to the ice is something that is reminiscent of her time competing for teams in Texas and Arizona.

It’ll be a nice bonus for the Villanueva family now that Sophia won’t be too far away from their home in Appleton once she makes the move out to Duluth. She has relatives in the Wausau and Arkansaw parts of the state too so she’ll be close to them as well.

The netminder is currently planning on following in the footsteps of her mother and studying business once she gets to school at Duluth in the fall.

In 2025-26, junior Eve Gascon is the presumed starter for the Bulldogs but Villanueva and redshirt sophomore Anna Byczek will be solid backup options to the NCAA First Team All-American in net.

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