DULUTH — Sophia Villanueva is the first Bulldog — man or woman — to call Texas home.
However, Texas is just one of a plethora of places the Minnesota Duluth freshman goaltender has called home in her young life.
Villanueva’s father, Mark, was a maintenance test pilot for Apache helicopters in the U.S. Army and his career took the family to Texas, Korea, Colorado Springs and back to Texas.
Meanwhile, Villanueva’s burgeoning hockey career has taken her to Arizona, Minnesota, Connecticut and back again to Minnesota, where at UMD she is the ever-ready understudy to Bulldogs junior goalie and Canadian Olympic hopeful Eve Gascon.
Villanueva — whose family now resides in Wisconsin — joined News Tribune college hockey reporter Matt Wellens and Zach Schneider of My 9 Sports this week on the Bulldog Insider Podcast to share her story. How does one go from stopping pucks in a horse barn-turned ice rink in El Paso to goaltending at a five-time NCAA Division I championship program in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association?
Below are edited excerpts from this week’s episode:
Matt Wellens: Out of all the places you lived, why do you consider El Paso home?
Sophia Villanueva: A couple reasons. The easiest reason is Texas, in general, is where I’ve lived most of my life. I was born there. I lived a couple years there before I had to move to Korea. Then when I went back to El Paso, I think that was the longest I’ve ever stayed in one spot. I think we did five or six years there. For an Army family, that’s a long time because usually it’s 3-4 years and then you move. To do five or six years in one place — I think my dad may have stayed for seven. So that was just the longest place I’ve ever stayed.
I’m living in Wisconsin right now, but I felt like a lot of my hockey journey and where I started was in Texas, was in Arizona, that Southwest area.
Zach Schneider: Where does Korea fit in? Was your dad stationed in Korea for a while?
Villanueva: He was stationed over there and we went with him. We stayed there for a couple years.
Schneider: That was when you were really young.
Villanueva: Yeah, I was probably 4 or 5.
Minnesota Duluth goaltender Sophia Villanueva (30) makes a save against Minnesota on Friday, Oct. 24 at Amsoil Arena in Duluth.
Clint Austin / File / Duluth Media Group
Schneider: Not many memories of Korea then?
Villanueva: I remember the food. I remember the baseball games and I remember the food. It was great. I miss it sometimes.
Wellens: Where did hockey come in? When did you first start playing hockey?
Villanueva: This was really kind of out of the blue. … I was the kid that did every sport I could play. I did drums. I did martial arts. I tried everything. When I was around, I think it was around 10, I was living in Colorado Springs. It was my last year there. I found a flyer.
Genuinely, this is how I started hockey.
A school sent out a flyer for inline hockey, which is roller hockey. I brought it to my parents. I was like, ‘I want to do this.’ I was playing three sports. They’re like, ‘no.’
Eventually they were like, ‘Fine,’ because they thought I would quit, fall on my face, be done. I think it was about a year later, maybe less than a year, we moved to El Paso, and El Paso doesn’t have inline hockey. They only have ice hockey. So I switched over.
Wellens: Which is odd for El Paso. It’s on the border.
Villanueva: It’s so hot. It’s 150 degrees and you have ice? But not roller rinks?
Wellens: They wanted to get out of the heat, obviously.
Villanueva: So I transferred over to ice hockey and I just kept playing and playing and I loved it. I dropped every other sport. I was like, ‘I don’t want to do anything else.’ My parents were like, ‘OK, if you really want to do it, we’ll do the best that we can to find any resources.’ That’s how it led over to Arizona, because Arizona is six hours and Dallas is eight or nine, so it was technically closer. We went over there and that’s where I started understanding what hockey is.
I had one of my favorite coaches when I played boys. He used to say, ‘Kids walk into this program as kids who play hockey and they leave being hockey players,’ and I think that’s pretty true.
Check out the full episode for more from Villanueva. You can find the Bulldog Insider Podcast at
DuluthNewsTribune.com/BulldogInsider
, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop Thursdays throughout the UMD men’s and women’s hockey seasons.