From D3 to the Olympic Stage: How Rei Halloran Turned a Distant Dream Into Olympic Reality

Ask most kids what they want to be when they grow up, and a few will say "an Olympian." For Rei Halloran, that wasn't a polite answer she gave adults. It was a dream so distant it lived in the same drawer as the other impossibilities.

"It truly was such a far, far dream. Like it was like when kids would say they wanted to become a superhero. That's kind of what it was like to me when I was thinking about the Olympics. It's just a dream I can have, and kind of pushing myself to become better — but it wasn't something that I thought was a reality ever."

Three years after she decided to actually chase it, Rei was standing in an Olympic Village elevator trying not to fangirl over Charlie McAvoy, in a goalie kit with Team Japan's crest on her chest, about to come in cold for 15 minutes of Olympic women's hockey.

This is the story of how she got there.

The D3 player no agent wanted to sign

Most agency cold-pitches from Division III hockey players end the same way: politely, with a no.

"I got turned down by so many agencies just because they didn't think I could play professionally, or they didn't think I had a future in hockey."

The unwritten rule of the women's hockey world for most of the last decade was that the path to pro went through the top-end D1 programs. Rei played at Wesleyan. A high school coach introduced her to Eleni at Cook Stark Management, who didn't see the credential. She saw the goalie.

"She was like, 'Of course you can play. We're gonna find you a place to play. We're not gonna take no for an answer.' I really felt supported and heard and seen. It was nice to finally have someone that was like, 'Who cares if you play D3 — you're still a good hockey player, and you're gonna be able to play professionally somewhere.'"

That single conversation is the hinge of the whole story. If you're an under-recruited athlete reading this, that's the part you should re-read.

The European stepping stones most people skip

The thing nobody tells you about pro hockey: it doesn't have to start in the PWHL. Rei's pro career started in Norway. Then Sweden for two months (cut short by a visa issue).

"Norway was honestly a great stepping stone for me. I met some really great people. The team culture was great. The hockey wasn't the step up I was looking for, but it was a great stepping stone in me getting used to European hockey."

European hockey, in her telling, is a different sport from what she'd played in the NESCAC. Cleaner. Less physical. Tape-to-tape passes. Structured fore-check, structured D-zone. After Wesleyan — which was "anything kind of goes" hard-checking, dump-and-chase hockey — it took adjustment. But that adjustment was what built her up to where the Japanese national team conversation became possible.

The takeaway is one most North American athletes don't internalize: the path through Europe is a real path. Norway, Sweden, the smaller European leagues — these aren't consolation prizes. They're how you stay in the game, build reps against pros, and get visible to national-team scouts.

The work that nobody saw

Rei is honest about the work ethic question. She didn't always have it.

"I'm typically a person when something gets a little bit hard, I do give up pretty easily. I get pretty discouraged easily. But I honestly, I just put my head down and just worked super hard. I've gotten so much stronger in the gym. It's like the little moments of when people don't want to skate because maybe they're hungover and they want to go hang out with their friends in the summer — I skated almost every day."

Three years. Almost every day. While other twenty-somethings were doing what twenty-somethings do.

What changed inside her, in her own words, was a shift in identity. She'd always been the overlooked goalie, the D3 player, the one who had to prove she belonged. Last summer, after skating with PWHL and D1 players at the Cook Stark Management Mile High Summit camp in Denver, the math finally clicked:

"I felt like I really didn't feel out of place. I think that was a little bit of that confidence that I needed for that last six months or seven months to go to the Olympics. I always felt like I didn't deserve to be there. I didn't belong, just because I've always been overlooked in my career. And I think this past year I've had this confidence where I do feel like I belong, and I do feel like I can play at the highest level, and I'm not just some girl they picked up on the street because they were missing a goalie."

If you've ever spent years on the wrong side of "you're not quite the level we're looking for," that paragraph is for you.

The phone call on the bullet train

The call came in late. Three days late, in fact. Rei had given up on the dream and was on a bullet train with her family, headed to a long-postponed ski trip — "I hadn't skied in years because of hockey" — when her head coach finally rang.

He kept it casual. Small talk. The trip. The family. Rei's nerves were doing pole-vaults in her chest.

"I was just like, 'Can you just kind of tell me — did I make the team or not?' And he's like, 'Oh yeah, do you think you can come to training camp in three days?' And I was like, 'Of course, yeah, no problem.' And he's like, 'And also, do you feel up to coming to Milan?'"

She was sitting next to her family when she got the news. She wasn't allowed to tell them — or anyone — for three days. Until the official media release.

"Those three days were the hardest three days of just like keeping it on the low the whole time."

What Olympic hockey actually felt like

Rei played 15 minutes of the Milan Games. Her team was already losing in what was effectively a must-win, and she came in cold — "It's really hard to just kind of step on the ice and feel 100% ready."

What she remembers isn't the pressure. It's the joy.

"I just honestly had some of the most fun I've ever had playing hockey when I played there for 15 minutes. I don't know if people watched, but I was like smiling the whole time and having so much fun. It was super fun."

The pressure she'd been carrying for three years lifted the second the puck dropped, because the team was already losing and there was nothing to lose. There's a lesson somewhere in there about how the moments we spend the longest dreading are often the lightest ones to actually live through.

The Charlie McAvoy elevator

The best Olympic Village story isn't about the food ("dining hall food was dining hall food") or the cardboard-mattress meme ("the beds were not as bad as everyone was saying"). It's about the elevator.

"You would get into an elevator and it could be like an NHL player, and you're like trying to act cool, like you belong there, and you're like, 'Hey, what's up?' Like, not like fangirling inside — you're just like super cool about it. And then they'll leave and you're like, 'Oh my god, it was like Charlie McAvoy.' So like you'll freak out a little bit after."

But the bigger Olympic-Village takeaway from Rei isn't the celebrity sightings. It's what the village did to her sense of what's possible going forward:

"You go to the gym in the Olympic Village and you just see how much hard work everyone's putting in into their sport. That was awesome to see, and it's very motivating for me, thinking about maybe the next four years if I want to keep playing — just like how much work actually goes into it. I'm like, okay, I also have to put in that work too."

LA 2028 isn't an abstraction for her. It's a calibration.

Her dad

You don't get to where Rei got without somebody in your corner who refuses to flinch.

"My dad kind of grew up with nothing and built his life from the ground up for our family. He's been my number one supporter. He's just a great dad. He'll literally put everything in his life on hold for me. If I just give him a call and I'm freaking out or something — he's been amazing. I've tried to quit hockey so many times, and he's really talked me off that ledge."

The Boston dad, the Japanese mom — "a little bit more of a toned down version. She doesn't get as emotionally invested in some of the moments when I'm emotionally invested" — is the kind of family balance that builds the kind of athlete Rei has become. She'll be the first to tell you the stubborn side comes from her dad.

The personality trait that got her there

We asked her what part of her personality made her capable of becoming an elite athlete. She didn't pause.

"I don't take no for an answer. I'm super stubborn. It's good and bad, I think. When coaches tell me I'm not good enough or that I'm not gonna make it to a certain level, I'm kind of like, 'Well, what do you know? Like, I can do it. Just because you didn't want to play me doesn't mean that a different team is not gonna want to play me.'"

That stubbornness shows up in the crease too — "I hate when the puck goes into the goal. I'll do everything in my power to keep it out. I'll dive, I'll literally throw things — it's crazy. But that kind of mindset of just not wanting that puck to go into the goal has helped me make some insane saves that I don't even know how I made."

She named her goalie influences — Tim Thomas (Boston roots showing), Marc-Andre Fleury for the athletic-not-pretty-but-it-works style, and Aerin Frankel at the women's level for what she's done with a smaller frame. She watches film constantly. She also coaches goalies herself.

What's next: the platform, the rescues, the next Games

Rei went from roughly 7 TikTok followers to 17,000 in a month around the Games — a small fortune of attention by women's hockey standards. She has very specific plans for what she wants to do with it.

"I want to grow my social media presence. I just think spreading the message about — if you work hard, you can make your dreams come true. Truly. Continuing to push that social media presence for me is really important. I would love to work with rescues. I used to work at the MSPCA, which is an animal shelter here. I just want to continue being a mentor to young female athletes, and even after I retire, I coach — I would love to keep pushing and making women's sports, and especially women's hockey, bigger, and making it something that all girls can achieve regardless of their background or anything."

Animal rescues. Mentoring young female athletes. Coaching. The plan isn't a one-off Olympic moment monetization. It's a platform built on a thesis: the path to the Olympic stage doesn't have to look the way you've been told it does.

Her closing advice

The closing question on every Athletes Podcast episode is the same: the

biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes. Rei's answer:

"Create a goal for yourself and don't let anyone tell you you can't achieve that goal. Do anything in your power to become a better person, teammate, everything human — and get to that goal by hard work, not taking no for an answer, and doing the little things right. And doing the little things when no one's looking."

The last sentence is the one that travels.

Listen to the full conversation

Rei is one of the most quietly relentless guests we've had on the show. The Cinderella framing is real, but it under-sells what actually drove this. The story isn't luck. It's the three years of skating almost every day while everyone else was hungover.

🎧 Listen to the full episode now: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube · Buzzsprout

Follow Rei: on TikTok and Instagram — handles to confirm in the show notes Her agency: Cook Stark Management 

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