Ava Rinker played on the Junior Flyers girls’ hockey team. Now, she’s headed to the PWHL.

When Ava Rinker’s parents took her to her first Hershey Bears game when she was 7 years old, they never imagined that Rinker one day would be playing pro hockey, too.

Rinker, now 22, was selected in the fourth round, 30th overall, by the Minnesota Frost in the 2025 Professional Women’s Hockey League draft on June 24. The Frost won the Walter Cup, the PWHL championship trophy, in each of the league’s first two years of existence.

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Rinker and her family were at home, streaming the draft. It was slightly behind. When Rinker’s name was picked, the Elverson native and Connecticut grad was flooded with texts and calls — which stopped the stream from her phone to the TV altogether.

“I missed it,” Rinker said. “We put it back up on the TV and rewound it a little bit, then we all freaked out because it was real.”

That Hershey Bears game was where Rinker’s hockey journey began. After watching the American Hockey League game, she asked her parents for roller blades and started playing street hockey with her brother, AJ, in their driveway.

“My interest kept rising, I loved playing sports when I was little,” Rinker said. “My parents put me on the ice.”

She quickly graduated out of her learn-to-skate program and into playing hockey with boys.

“My only problem was learning how to stop,” she said. “It was like that same year I ended up on a mites team, and then I kept moving up and it took off from there.”

The Junior Flyers girls’ hockey program began when Rinker was in middle school, conveniently providing her with an option to play girls’ hockey without moving. With the Junior Flyers, she was a two-time team captain and played with the team for six years. She was their first Division I recruit and is now their first PWHL draftee.

“It was definitely something special,” Rinker said of the girls’ program. “I met so many people through it, and I’m just really happy with how well they’re doing. I loved that it was close to home, and I didn’t have to go anywhere.”

Her talent was evident from the start. As a freshman, Rinker was a top 10 defenseman, according to UConn coach Chris MacKenzie. He recruited her to play for the Huskies when she was just 14.

“There wasn’t really an age restriction on when you could recruit someone,” MacKenzie said. “Her skill level was really high. Everyone knew who she was by ninth or 10th grade. And there’s not a lot of college teams in the Philly area, so it was kind of wide-open for her.”

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Despite her early talent, Rinker didn’t get much playing time her first year at UConn.

“It was a growing year for her,” MacKenzie said. “And then she slowly got better, and her last two years, I think she was arguably a top defenseman on our team and in our league. So she just progressively got better every year.”

Added Rinker: “I fell in love with the coaches and team atmosphere at UConn. Especially how much they cared about their players.”

She used that caring dynamic when she served as an alternate captain this past season. Rinker says she looked up to a lot of the senior players and used their guidance to help lead the team.

“I’m more of a lead-by-example [player],” Rinker said. “I’m not always speaking out in the locker room, but I just try to get everyone to play hard. In practice, I’d tell everyone not to take it easy, like ‘Don’t be afraid to hit me.’”

MacKenzie says Rinker’s college experience is going to help her at Minnesota because she knows how to handle adversity. If she doesn’t get much ice time right away, she can learn from seasoned players and improve.

“She’s going to fit into their structure and how they want to play,” MacKenzie said. “She’s not going to be playing a ton of minutes right away. She’s used to that. She did that in college. So she’s going to find her way somehow.

“She’s a person that gets along with everyone.”

Rinker is excited to share the ice with hockey legends like Kendall Coyne Schofield, whom Rinker said has been “a driving force for the PWHL.”

But before she leaves for training camp in November, Rinker is staying local. She’s teaching hockey courses and camps with her former skating coach, David Bauer, at Ice Land Skating Center, where she got her start.

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She’s also supporting her brother while at home. AJ, who uses a wheelchair, plays for the Flyers’ PowerPlay team, a power wheelchair floor hockey team founded in 2003 “with the purpose of providing an athletic and social environment for people who use power wheelchairs in their daily lives.”

“We both started playing street hockey,” Rinker said. “My brother is a big supporter.”

The Flyers community has been huge for Rinker and her family. She and her brother played for Flyers-affiliated teams, and she says she would have loved having a women’s team to look up to as a kid.

“I sure hope [a team comes to Philly],” Rinker said. “The PWHL just had two new teams added, and it’s still a really new league, so I’m sure in time, with the game growing something may pop up, hopefully.”

Would she come back and play for it?

“Of course, definitely,” Rinker said.