Macarena Cruz Ceballos (R), 23, one of the defender of the Selección femenil de México de hockey sobre hielo, puts on her helmet in the locker room before a match at the Winter Sports Center Metepec in Metepec, State of Mexico, Mexico on February 15, 2019. The team played against the Buffalos Metepec in the “Midget” Hockey League, the score was 3-3. Macarena lives with her parents in San Jerónimo Lídice, an affluent residential neighborhood in Mexico City. Her brother lives in Canada, where he plays ice hockey in the Junior League. She studies economics and finance at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, at the Mexico City campus. She started figure skating at age 5 and ice hockey at age 12. She is one of the assistant captains of the team. “Honestly, I think that the backbone of the team has been our parents. […] My dad is our number one fan, he has been to all of the World Cups with his Mexican flag at the ready,” she says. Founded in 2012, the Selección femenil de México de hockey sobre hielo is the first and only women’s national ice hockey team in Mexico, a country where ice rinks are expensive and rare. In the 2017 IIHF Women's World Championship Division II in Iceland, the team defied expectations; They won Group B, securing their promotion to Group A, and became the only Mexican ice hockey team to have achieved such a feat. This year, they are competing in the 2019 IIHF Women's World Championship Division II in Scotland. Having become the first Mexican team to advance to the second round of the Winter Olympics qualifiers in 2016, the now self-financed team are training for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, hoping to be the first Latin American team to compete in ice hockey. (Photo by Bénédicte Desrus)