At midnight on Feb. 17, 2024, Makenna Chokelal ’25 walked in the icy cold to greet the women’s hockey team with confetti poppers and a congratulatory sign after its victory over then No. 15 Yale to claim the Ivy League title.
On Jan. 25, 2025, Chokelal made the same frigid walk to the bus to congratulate the team on its victory against Harvard. This time, her sign read “It’s two easy! Congrats champ!” referring to the team’s back-to-back titles.
Meet Makenna Chokelal, known as women’s ice hockey “biggest fan” by her teammates and an advocate for athletes’ mental health following her medical retirement from the sport.
Injury, Surgery and a Difficult Decision
Chokelal hails from Oshawa, a city in Ontario, Canada and studies psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences. According to Chokelal, her first year of college can be best described as a whirlwind of events. She was originally set to attend Cornell in the fall of 2020, but due to an ankle injury and the COVID-19 pandemic, Chokelal chose to defer her offer of admission.
So, when she started playing games for the Red on the women’s ice hockey team in 2021, she was excited to get back on the ice and skate.
“We had a pretty young team at the time, so fortunately, we were given many opportunities to play,” Chokelal said.
She played 26 games for the Red that year, taking 16 shots and assisting twice. Unfortunately for Chokelal, this one season of play would be her last due to a major hip injury.
“Toward the end of the season, I started getting pretty bad pain in one of my hips, so talking with the trainer, we decided to treat it as a pulled hip flexor,” Chokelal said. “I ended up getting a referral for an MRI with a contrast dye, and when the results came back, I found out I had a labrum tear, cam hip impingement and degeneration of my cartilage.”
The first option for Chokelal was to get a cortisone injection before considering surgery. Unfortunately, this treatment did not work.
In the summer of 2022, Chokelal decided with her trainer to take the next big step and get surgery done on her left hip due to severe daily pain.
On June 22, 2022, Chokelal had her first hip surgery. She had five anchors placed in her left labrum — which is more than the average of two to three surgeons typically use. Along with surgery, Chokelal was given platelet-rich plasma from her blood in an attempt to speed up her recovery.
Unfortunately for Chokelal, she would endure another surgery on her right hip due to pain that began six weeks post-operation.
“When I returned to Cornell for my sophomore year, I immediately had another MRI done that basically confirmed the same level of damage on the right side,” Chokelal said. “I had a very difficult conversation with my teammates and coaches basically stating that I was out.”
Chokelal would not participate in the 2022-2023 women’s ice hockey season. On top of that, she was not able to get her next surgery until the end of the fall semester.
“Due to Cornell’s hills, it is not the most optimal thing to be walking around a college campus fresh out of surgery on crutches so I had to wait about four months to get my surgery,” Chokelal said.
During this time, her teammates and coaches informed her that they would be around to support her and that she was still a member of the team. However, Chokelal’s pain made it difficult to watch her teammates play.
“Sitting in the rink to watch the practice was painful because the cold would make my hips ache,” Chokelal said. “When we would do team lifts, I was sidelined because I had to do my own rehabilitation.”
Chokelal explained that the team did their best to include her even though she was not even able to skate. She was present for all the games but did not travel on the road because sitting on the bus for extended periods of time was too much of a strain on her hips.
Luckily, Chokelal’s second operation went well and come her sophomore spring, she was making plans to get back on the ice twelve weeks later.
“My recovery was going really well, much better than my first surgery,” Chokelal said. “It was around March when I had a pretty big setback because I got too eager about my recovery, which knocked me back a couple steps.”
Her pain was so excruciating that she described it as “someone tearing apart” her hips. Chokelal ultimately had more difficult conversations with her surgeons, trainer and coaches.
“I had to think for myself, current me and future me what would be best mentally, emotionally and physically,” Chokelal said. “That is when I made the really difficult decision to step away from hockey.”
Out of the Game, Into Advocacy
With her hopes of skating on the ice over, Chokelal turned her attention to working on improving and assisting the team off the ice.
“I remember talking to our director for hockey, Louise Derraugh, wanting to help the community and work on bringing back initiatives that were canceled due to COVID-19,” Chokelal said.
Her first initiative was to bring back the women’s ice hockey Toys for Tots drive, a program that provides toys for children in need, specifically around Christmastime.
As the only Black athlete on the team, Chokelal explained the importance of having representation. During Black History Month, she invited then-Cornell volleyball player and athlete advocate, Sydney Moore, to come and talk to the team.
“It was important to me to bring in a different perspective and have the girls listen to her speaking was very inspiring,” Chokelal said.
She also helped run the Salvation Army’s Adopt a Family program — a holiday program that pairs up a family in need with a sponsor — to the team’s philanthropy efforts. For Chokelal, these programs helped her to mentally deal with her injury.
“It was an outlet to be able to help the team and use my free time since I was not able to contribute hours on the rink like the girls do every day,” Chokelal said. “I was able to pour that energy into giving back to the community.”
As a junior, Chokelal continued the Toys for Tots initiative and had Dean Marla Love come and speak to the team for Black History Month. In addition, Love filmed a “Dean Does New Things” challenge with the team where she tried to play ice hockey.
The Hidden Opponent
While Chokelal’s transition from a Division I athlete to a regular student seemed to be going smoothly to most people, she said her personal reality was much more complicated.
“When I decided to step away from hockey, it felt like my entire identity was stripped away from me,” Chokelal said. “Everyone in my life knew me as an athlete, so looking at the circle of what makes me who I am, it felt like being a hockey player was that entire circle.”
Chokelal authored a poetic collage she called When the Mask Slips where she discussed all the emotions she felt stepping away from her sport.
“As athletes, we give our blood, sweat and tears to our sports,” Chokelal said. “I wanted the piece to resonate with people outside of hockey, and if one line helped someone, that is all that really matters. I wanted people to know they are not alone in their experiences, and that life is not always so glamorous.”
Chokelal’s advice to athletes is to listen to their bodies and prioritize their mental health. Her goals for the future are to continue pushing to eliminate the negative stigma surrounding mental health and see the women’s hockey team be successful this year.
“We have some big ECAC quarterfinals coming up, so right now, my focus is on supporting the team,” Chokelal said. “In the long term, I really want to see more conversations about athletes and mental health.”
