Haughn’s Incredible 15-year career draws to a close in 2026
Hannah Haughn formally announced her retirement last month from the Women’s National Team. It’s a career marked by incredible longevity and perseverance. Upon retirement, Haughn is currently third all time with 201 international caps and fourth all time in goals with 40. She is the youngest Canadian woman to reach 100 caps, doing so when she was only 21 years old. The numbers are incredible, but they don’t tell the full story.
Originally from North Vancouver, Haughn first saw the women’s national team play a test-match in Victoria in 2008 when she was 13 years old. She said it was the first time she truly saw high performance hockey and could envision herself out there on the field. She added that it’s hard to imagine she would be getting her first senior cap only three years later. In 2010, she got the invite to her first senior team selection camp. She admits she felt like a ‘fish out of water’, as one of the youngest at the camp.
“When I went to my first carding camp, I had just finished at BC High School Championships. I was in grade 11, had just turned 16 and I didn’t know I was about to make my first big step towards my goal of playing on the women’s national team,” Haughn said.
Haughn wound up being selected after that camp to join the Women’s National Team. As a high school student in North Vancouver and a member of the national team, Haughn reflects on the challenges and learnings throughout that initial stretch.
“I was commuting on the bus after school out to UBC from North Van. It meant eating dinner and doing homework on the bus, traveling for a few hours four days a week,” Haughn recalls. “It was a whirlwind as I was thrust into an adult life. I had school and training pretty much full time.”
Within a few months of being selected, Haughn was asked to join the team on tour and was playing in her first international cap. From high school provincials to representing Canada on the senior level in only a handful of months. Haughn’s life took a drastic change that shaped the many years to come.
Hannah Haughn made her senior international debut as a 16-year old in San Diego, California on January 19, 2011 against Team USA. It was the start of one of the longest and most prolific careers in Canadian hockey history. At the time, she was surrounded by legends of the era including players such as Tyla Flexman, Thea Culley and Katie Baker, among many others.
Haughn has documented every tour (40 tours and tournaments) she’s been on with the national team in a notebook that she keeps handy. She paged through it as she reflected on moments that stood out to her during her 15-year career with the national team. Standing out immediately was her first major multisport tournament in the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara.
“It was my first multisport games and I remember being in that atmosphere, with other Canadian athletes and be apart of such an amazing collective. It’s something I’ll never forget,” Haughn said. “It was also the tournament where I scored my first goal and first played against idols of mine in the sport.”
Haughn spoke nostalgically and memorably about several other tournaments including walking out to a raucous crowd at 930pm to play against Argentina at the 2013 Pan American Cup in Mendoza. She won a bronze medal at home at the Pan American Games in Toronto in 2015 and speaks passionately about the special performance Canada delivered to earn a Pan American Games silver medal in Lima in 2019.
“To be able to beat the US in the semis [in 2019], and play Argentina in the finals, was wild. It was one of our best ever finish at a Pan American Games in a long time,” Haughn said. “We spent two years in Belgium preparing for [those qualifier events in 2019]. We were training six days per week, we got so close as a team. We were living and breathing field hockey.”
Haughn’s final big push in a competitive setting came in 2022 with her participation in the FIH Hockey World Cup and Commonwealth Games. Although she was sidelined with injury during World Cup qualification, She was healthy, back on the field, and was selected for the World Cup and Comm Games rosters.
“This group of players had been working for so long to make it to an Olympics or World Cup and after putting a year and a half into knee rehab, getting to run onto the field at the World Cup…was a dream come true,” Haughn said.
For Haughn, it’s next to impossible to leaf through her booklet of 40 tours and only isolate a couple to talk about. For a career with such incredible longevity and high performance, so many moments standout as critical. For Haughn, however, she said the times in between tours are really what makes the mettle of a player.
“As much as the tournaments and tours are important, it’s really the day-to-day grind that is the most memorable. You can measure your career in milestones and accolades, but I really believe the in-between phases are the more important parts,” she said. “The magic really happens when you show up at the field with 20 of your friends to work towards a common goal.”
Haughn said it’s in these moments she can really reflect on all the amazing teammates and moments she had along the way during her incredible career. Again, there’s far too many teammates for her to simply list off in thanks and appreciation, but some memories that jump out to her include Brie Stairs on DJ duty, Shanlee Johnston bringing the coffee bar on tour, Rowan Harris’ spikeball and card-game prowess and battling over air conditioning and room temperature with long-time teammate Maddie Secco. She highlights Nat Sourisseau and Secco as players she grew up with from playing with and against in high school to sharing the field internationally many, many times.
Haughn was an attacking midfielder and a self-described gadget player who could do it all. Wherever the coaching staff needed her, she could be relied on. Not necessarily knowing her role was a source of anxiety, but she turned it into a point of pride. She said she wasn’t flashy but helped make those around her better. She also potted 40 goals in her career, good for fourth all time among women’s national team players. Off field during her career, she became the team support network. She said she was an open book with her struggle and was always open to listening to others. She is now pursuing a career as a Youth Therapist, a perfect fit with her experience and temperament.
When talking about her longevity, she cites the love of the game and commitment through the tough times. Haughn battled injury for the majority of the second half of her career. She battled back from ACL surgery to play in the 2022 World Cup. And shortly thereafter she battled another ACL surgery to get back on the pitch recently. She says the love of hockey, her internal motivation and the people around her are the three core reasons why she feels she was able to have such a long, successful career.
“I have never stopped loving it. If I could play on the national team until I’m 80, I’d do it,” she said. “The people make it. When you grow up together and have a similar goal, you want to keep showing up for those people and you know they’re going to do the same for you.”
Haughn battled injury up until her final participation at a recent spring camp in 2026. After that moment and looking forward, she said it felt like the right time to hang up the boots. She said she seemed it was fitting to start and end her career at the same spot during a national team carding camp. For her it felt like a full circle moment. She was proud of herself for getting back from injury, and at the same time, ultimately decided this was the right moment for retirement.
“I didn’t want to make any decisions as I was rehabbing and returning to sport. I didn’t want my injury to decide that for me. I wanted to retire on my own terms,” Haughn said. “When I was at the carding camp, I was rusty, but it felt so good to be out there, competing at a high level. I thought I might need a few more tournaments to feel closure and complete but feeling good at the carding camp ultimately was enough for me to bookend my career.”
Congratulations Hannah for an all-time legendary career! Best of luck with what comes next.
All photos provided by Yan Huckendubler
