Former Wisconsin star earns place in US Hockey Hall of Fame

Brianna Decker will be added to the American hockey shrine in December as part of the Class of 2024. The Dousman native and 2012 Patty Kazmaier Award winner won the 2011 NCAA championship with the Badgers, for whom she is the second all-time leading scorer.

"You start hockey at a young age and you don't think about things like this," Decker said. "You just follow the path and follow the journey. So it's a pretty surreal moment being inducted."

Decker's journey included winning an Olympic gold medal with Team USA in 2018 and being part of silver medal-winning teams in 2014 and 2022. She suffered a leg injury in the team's opening game at the latter, and it was her final national team appearance.

3-time USA Hockey Olympian, former Badgers player Brianna Decker retires

Decker was the winner of USA Hockey's Bob Allen Women's Player of the Year Award in 2015 and 2017 and played in eight World Championship tournaments.

She was part of a group unveiled Thursday that will be honored at the induction ceremony Dec. 4 in Pittsburgh. The others in the class were Matt Cullen, Frederic McLaughlin, Kevin Stevens and the gold medal-winning 2002 Paralympic sled hockey team.

Only Hilary Knight has more goals and points in Badgers history than Decker's 115 and 244 gained in a collegiate career from 2009 to 2013.

Decker had 80 points as a sophomore when the 2010-11 Badgers team that also featured Knight and Meghan Duggan as forwards captured the team's fourth NCAA championship in six seasons.

An 82-point season in 2011-12 led her to the Patty Kazmaier Award as national player of the year.

Decker, who played for the Madison Capitols youth program after growing up with the Waukesha Youth Hockey Association, was inducted into the Wisconsin Hockey Hall of Fame in 2019 and the University of Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 2023.

She grew up playing on boys teams because girls-only teams were rare.

"Fortunately enough, the boys treated me like one of them," Decker said. "I obviously accepted that and I loved it. And I think playing with the boys growing up made me as competitive as can be, honestly. I think whether it was on the rink with them or playing with my brothers in street hockey, it was like I couldn't get away from that compete level."

She started the Brianna Decker Endowment for Girls Hockey in 2019 to provide grants to youth programs for girls, initially in Wisconsin but eventually around the country.

"I wanted to help the girls feel comfortable if they didn't feel comfortable playing with boys," Decker said. "Some girls want to play just for fun and some want to get to the next level. So I feel like I'm trying to help that lane or that alley or whatever way they want to take."

Her post-college playing career included championships in the Canadian Women's Hockey League and National Women's Hockey League and two MVP awards in the NWHL. She has returned to Shattuck-St. Mary's prep school in Minnesota, where she went to high school, as a girls hockey coach.

"I look at my career, and when I got on the national team consistently back in 2010, 2011, I had the opportunity to play with Angela Ruggiero and Julie Chu," Decker said. "Those guys made such an impact on the game early on. So I think our generation of players made a pact that we would try to raise the bar and continue to do the same thing and impact the game as much as possible."