Opportunities in hockey were nonexistent for girls like Winny Brodt Brown growing up in Minnesota in the early 1990s. It was 1995 when the Minnesota State High School League finally added girls’ hockey as a sanctioned sport Brodt saw her chance, took the local hockey world by storm, and hasn’t stopped since, helping to grow the game for girls’ hockey.

Brown started her hockey career with the boys’ teams in the Roseville Area Youth Hockey Association. After the MSHSL sanctioned girls’ hockey in 1995-96, and thanks to Brown’s 62 goals and 60 assists in 30 games, Roseville went undefeated and won the state title in the first MSHSL Girls’ Hockey State Tournament. In addition, Brown won the state’s inaugural Ms. Hockey Award, and was a top-three finalist for the Minnesota Sports Channel Athlete of the Year Award.

After Brown graduated high school in 1996, she headed east to the University of New Hampshire. Due to eligibility rules, she sat out her true freshman season while the NCAA clarified her status. It was in 1997-98, her first season of collegiate competition, that Brown led the Wildcats to the American Women’s College Hockey Alliance national title and was named tournament MVP.

Brown interrupted her college career to play for Team USA, and won silver medals at both the 2000 and 2001 World Championships. While competing for Team USA, Brown made the decision to head back home and transferred to the University of Minnesota where in 2000, Brown and the Gophers won the national title. She was named the WCHA Defensive Player of the Year and a top-10 finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award, given to the best female athlete in college hockey.

After graduating from Minnesota, Brown spent one season as the U15 Girls National Camp Coach in Rochester, N.Y., before coming back home again in 2004 to play for the Minnesota Whitecaps in their inaugural season in the Western Women’s Hockey League. She was with the Whitecaps for the 2010 Clarkson Cup win, the team’s independent years after the dissolution of the WWHL a year later, and the 2018-19 season when the team joined the Premier Hockey Federation. That year, the Whitecaps won the Isobel Cup.

In 2022, Brown announced her retirement from the Whitecaps. Less than one year later, she became the first head scout of the newly formed Minnesota team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, and in Spring 2024 they won the first-ever Walter Cup Championship.

Along with competing professionally all winter for 18 years, Brown also has coached for more than 20 years. She was active with the US National Team, community clinics and skills camps, and director and coach for the Upper Midwest Elite League. In 2004 she took over as director of OS Hockey, a training program designed specifically for female athletes to help them develop physically, socially, and emotionally, while also preparing them to play hockey at the next level. Brown coaches the Junior Whitecaps, a team made up of the top female hockey players in Minnesota. Hundreds of athletes from the OS program have gone on to play college, Olympic, and professional hockey. For the past 19 seasons, she has also served as the Channel 5  TV analyst for the MSHSL Girls’ State High School Hockey Tournament.

Whether she is playing, coaching, or on the air, Brown is working to help build the next generation of female hockey players in Minnesota. Her playing resume speaks for itself, and having one of the state’s top female hockey players stay at home to grow the game ensures that girls across Minnesota will have a role model to learn from and look up to, and that the “State of Hockey” remains alive and well.