Every four years, the world’s best athletes leave their homes, jobs and oftentimes professional sports leagues to participate in the Olympics. For the past three Winter Games, Brianne Jenner ’15 has been among them.
On Friday afternoon, Jenner was named to the Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team for the fourth time, tying Albert Hall ’56 and Rebecca Johnston ’12 for the school record in Olympic appearances.
Joining her on team Canada will be another decorated Cornell alum, albeit one without previous Olympic experience. After traveling to Beijing only as a member of Canada’s taxi squad in 2022, Kristin O’Neill ’20 will make her Olympic debut in Milan.
The news of Jenner and O’Neill’s Olympic participation comes a week after another historic Olympic announcement. On Jan. 2, Rory Guilday ’25 became the first Cornell alumna in school history to be selected to play for the United States Olympic women’s hockey team.
Guilday, a 5-foot-11 defender, shut down opposing forwards throughout her four years in Ithaca thanks to a physical and gritty style of play, culminating in an All-ECAC Hockey third team selection in 2025. Also an offensive contributor for Cornell thanks largely to her slapshot (dubbed “the hardest shot in the ECAC” by 2025 ECAC Goaltender of the Year Annelies Bergmann), Guilday tallied 52 points in her 106 games for the Red.
On the international level, Guilday has 41 senior national team appearances dating back to 2022, including three International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship medals. The Chanhassen, Minnesota native served as a fourth-line defender in three of the four 2025 Rivalry Series games, a role she seems likely to continue in the Olympics.
The Sun’s 2025 Female Athlete of the Year was selected fifth overall by the Ottawa Charge in the 2025 Professional Women’s Hockey League draft and has notched six assists through 11 games so far this season. Guilday scored her first goal in the PWHL on Dec. 2, unsurprisingly on a one-time slapshot.
A second-line center on the New York Sirens, O'Neill will make her Olympic debut eight years after her first game for Canada’s national team. The 27-year-old is known for her physical and creative play, as well as her strength from the dot where she currently sits second in faceoffs won in the PWHL.
O'Neill captained one of the best Cornell teams in program history, the 2019-2020 squad, which saw its season cut short due to COVID-19 days before the Red was set to begin the NCAA tournament as the No. 1 seed. The Sun’s 2020 Female Athlete of the Year finished her Cornell career with 145 points in 125 games, the program records for game-winning goals and short-handed goals, three All-ECAC selections and was the 2018 Ivy League Player of the Year.
Rounding out the Cornell selections is Jenner, the 2022 Olympic’s women’s hockey MVP. The three-time Olympic medalist made her Canadian senior team debut in 2009, and has gone on to win 11 IIHF World Championship medals and four Four Nations Cup championships.
Jenner made her Olympic debut in the 2014 Sochi Games, scoring Canada’s first goal of the tournament, and four years later in Pyongyang, she tallied a pair of assists. In Beijing, the Oakville, Ontario native scored an Olympic-leading nine goals and assisted on the tournament's winning goal in the championship game against the U.S.
The 34-year-old still holds the Cornell program records for career points and assists, and the single-season records for points, goals, assists and game-winning goals. In October, she was inducted into the Cornell Athletics Hall of Fame.
Women’s hockey at the 2026 Olympic Games will begin Feb. 5, with the United States opening its tournament against Czechia, and Canada facing off against Finland. The two teams will square off against one another on Feb. 10 in a rematch of every Olympic women’s hockey final except for 2006.
Eli Fastiff is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and a member of the class of 2026 in the College of Arts and Sciences. You can follow him on X @Eli_Fastiff and reach him at efastiff@cornellsun.com.
