As the Team USA Women’s and Men’s teams claimed gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, there were plenty of ties to Pittsburgh and plenty of history spanning more than 100 years, including the very origins of Team USA.
Vincent Trocheck was born and raised in Upper St. Clair and played his early youth hockey for the Pittsburgh Hornets. J.T. Miller was born in nearby East Palestine, OH, but moved to Pittsburgh to play his youth hockey, first for the Beaver County Badgers, then for the Pittsburgh Hornets. Last, but certainly not least, Ava McNaughton served as the backup goaltender for the Women’s Gold Medal team. She grew up in Seven Fields, PA, and played her youth hockey for the Arctic Foxes and Pittsburgh Penguins Elite.
While this golden trio has certainly made Pittsburgh proud, the Pittsburgh area’s ties to Olympic hockey actually date back to the very first US men’s Olympic ice hockey team. On March 16, 1920, the United States men’s national ice hockey team was founded at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens by Roy Schooley, a naturalized American from Welland, Ontario, who arrived in Pittsburgh in 1901.
Schooley began his career as a referee and later became manager of the Duquesne Gardens.
Duquesne Gardens, located in the Oakland section of town, was home to the Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets, which started as an amateur club but in 1922 joined the USAHA. The original Yellow Jackets spent four seasons in the USAHA, winning Championships in 1924 and 1925.
A trio of players from the Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets, Herb Drury and brothers Larry McCormick and Joe McCormick, the latter of whom captained the Olympic team, joined forces with players from Boston and St. Paul and trained at Duquesne Gardens. However, before Team USA could join the games, they needed to raise the hefty sum of $15,000 for a steamship to Belgium.
Converting 1920 dollars to today, that’s over $243,000.
To raise the money, the eventual Team USA played a series of exhibition games against Canadian teams. The exhibitions were successfu and the team was off to the games.
In those 1920 games, seven teams, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, France, and Switzerland, put teams on the ice, but here’s another twist: Even though the games were played in April, they were considered the Summer Olympics. In fact, the Winter Olympics did not exist yet.
The United States won silver, losing to Canada, and Drury–the Pittsburgh Yellow Jacket– led all scorers with 14 goals in just four games played.
In 1924, Drury once again represented the United States and competed in the first-ever Winter Olympic Games. Drury was the only Pittsburgh player to return from the 1920 team and actually led the American contingent of athletes, carrying the banner for the United States.
Drury had another phenomenal tournament, amassing 22 goals and three assists in just five games, including scoring the only goal for the U.S. in the gold medal game against Canada. Despite Drury’s heroics, he came back home with another silver medal, which is actually on display at the Heinz History Center.
When Drury returned to Pittsburgh after the 1924 Winter Olympics, he signed with Pittsburgh’s new National Hockey League team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. He played for the Pirates for five seasons and would go on to play 213 games in his NHL career. After his playing days, he retired to Pittsburgh, where he lived until his death in 1965.
Pittsburgh has seen many notable firsts in the history of sports. The first professional football game in 1892, the first radio broadcast of a baseball game in 1921 on KDKA, and the first night World Series game in 1971, just to name a few. However, few people know the significance of what happened at 110 North Craig Street in Oakland on March 16, 1920, when the first men’s Olympic ice hockey team was named. While Duquesne Gardens was demolished in 1956, a small section of original bricks from Duquesne Gardens can be seen in the Captain Morgan Club inside PPG Paints Arena.
When most Pittsburghers think of sports history and the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, they immediately think of Forbes Field and Pitt Stadium, but Duquesne Gardens was just as historic a venue. It has been nearly 106 years since Roy Schooley named that first United States Olympic ice hockey team at the Duquesne Gardens, but the legacy of that first team lives on in the 2026 gold medal-winning team.
Categorized:Olympics Penguins History
Follow us for breaking news and latest updates at Pittsburgh Hockey Now
Get the best Pens coverage and breaking news from the PHN team delivered to your inbox.
Hockey News