My sister just won the gold medal for Team USA hockey. She earned it

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

Nate Heise is a senior guard on the Iowa State men’s basketball team. His older sister, Taylor Heise, just won the gold medal with Team USA hockey.

Growing up, my older sister, Taylor, wrote one word in black Sharpie over the light switch in her bedroom: Olympics.

She not only wrote it, she believed it. And no matter what anyone told her, she was going to make it happen. 

She had goals written all over the place. She had a poster in her room that she wrote goals on. Things like: Make the USA Team. Get a Division I scholarship. And then she had the steps she needed to do in order to make those things happen, almost like a schedule. If I do this, then these things will follow.

That held her accountable.

I think a lot of people are scared to write lofty goals because they may not fulfill those goals, and that can be discouraging. But she’s one of the few people who wrote lofty goals and actually did the work in order to achieve them.

In the summer, when my parents went to work and left the house, my mom and dad would leave a list of things for Taylor and me to do. 

My mom’s list was things around the house: the dishes, laundry, that type of stuff. My dad’s list was about activities and exercise: bike up the hill or dribble for 30 minutes or bike to our grandpa’s house. 

Taylor was two years older than me, and there were days when I was like: I’m just not doing that. Our parents weren’t there to tell me I had to do it. But Taylor always did every single thing on that list.

If anything, she did more than what was asked of her.

My parents did a good job of setting high expectations and pushing us. Some people shy away from that, and some people don’t want their parents to interfere with their sports. But she always accepted how important our parents have been. Even today, she calls my dad before and after every game to check in and get advice.

When she was in seventh grade, she decided to go to a different school because our small-town high school didn’t have hockey. At the time, I was in fifth grade and didn’t understand it. It didn’t seem worth it to me. She had to drive 30 minutes to school every day, so she had to wake up early.

The first game I watched her play, she scored three goals on the varsity team as a seventh grader. I was like, “Yeah, this might work out for her.”

She was good at a young age but she also realized there were a lot of good players. If she wanted to be on the Olympic team, she needed to be better than good. That’s what motivated her. 

She had many people in her corner who helped her. My grandpa drove her to school every day before she had her license, and we all fed her pucks so she could shoot them into the net.

We had a shed to the left of our house that was mostly for sports. I’d do ballhandling drills in there; she worked on stick handling for hours and hours and hours. She never became bored with the small things, the tedious things. Stick handling with a puck, stick handling with a ball, shooting over and over again into a net with targets.

She watched a lot of NHL games, and when she saw a move, she would go out to the shed and practice it for a long time. That’s what separated her. She was willing to do things the average person wasn’t willing to do, that even the good player wasn’t willing to do. 

Some people have enough talent that they’re going to be good regardless. I know she would have been solid, but without her work ethic, she wouldn’t be near where she is. She knew what she had to do if she wanted to be the best. And that was her goal: to be the best.

When you watch her play now for Team USA, you can see her confidence on the ice. She worked for that confidence. She made it happen.

She’s gotten to the point where she has hobbies and other things she likes to do. In her mind, she earned the right to have those hobbies by how much she sacrificed growing up.

The gold medal game against Canada on Thursday was the biggest game of her life. She earned it. She has always earned everything she’s received, and it felt like this was the last thing on her checklist. I’m not sure what she’s going to do after this. But I bet she writes down some new goals. 

— As told to Jayson Jenks.