Staying in shape has been a challenge over the past year. The pandemic has closed gyms and fitness centers, forcing many to rethink their routines at home or completely change directions. Personally, I was very happy to find a love for kickboxing and Peloton biking, but this hasn’t been the case for everyone. That’s the business of Mariah Fujimagari outside of the world of hockey. The 26 year old native of Markham, Ontario started “Young Elite Athletes” along with her brother Joshua with the goal of providing young hockey players and their parents the tools to live a healthier lifestyle and achieve higher performance on and off the ice. I spoke to her recently about her drive to build this business, and how it’s helped her stay focused in her own athletic life given the current times.
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Fujimagari, like most Canadians, started skating on outdoor rinks set up by her parents from about the moment she could walk. The sport was always prominent in her life and she started to play multiple sports outside of hockey with the freedom to choose which one she wanted to heavily pursue. She went on to play collegiate hockey at the University of Maine for five years total with one redshirt season but before then, wasn’t sure how much she was originally going to play. “There was no NWHL, there was no professional platform for us. I always said I want to be in the NHL and be the first girl in the NHL. And now with the NWHL they’ve made it possible for us to be professional athletes, and it’s only growing.”
After college, Fujimagari played overseas in Slovakia, where she would become great friends with future NWHL teammates Lenka Curmova and Iveta Klimasova. She says her European experience brought back the simple pleasures of life. “Both of them [Curmova and Klimasova] became my best friends instantly,” she said. She chose the CWHL first because it offered her an opportunity to play much closer to the Greater Toronto Area, with teams in Toronto and Markham. When the league folded, Fujimagari and others were left with a fork in the road choice over where to play next. Her old goalie coach Mandy Cronin had become the general manager of the Buffalo Beauts and she quickly recruited Fujimagari. “The girls in Slovakia were hungry to continue their career and were interested in the NWHL and what it had to offer. So I said, jump over the border here and come check it out.” Both players stayed with Fujimagari at her condo where they would drive to Buffalo for tryouts in the summer. The rest became history with both Curmova and Fujimagari becoming all stars.
The new business
Young Elite Athletes (YEA) was established by Fujimagari and her brother with the goal of helping youth hockey players improve their performance through healthy diets and better nutritional thinking. Her degree at Maine was in nutrition, and starting the business was the culmination of a great venture come to life.
“We always knew that we wanted to work in the hockey community in some aspect, and both of us being from a nutrition background, we both came up with this idea about two years ago now.”
The drive for Fujimagari to give back was always there from an early age. Her family introduced her to healthy and whole foods at a young age, and she went on to run a farm with some of her best friends as a nutrition and agricultural major at the University of Maine. “Seeing the food go from seed to harvest and having that be the fruit of our labor and our hard work managing that much land, and all of us all being women, it was such an empowering experience. I wanted to give that gift of health to people and make that be a positive impact in their life.”
There’s no doubt that the pandemic has made times a lot more uncertain for athletes and others when it comes to their health and lifestyle goals. The most important thing Fujimagari hopes her clients realize is that they can still have full ownership over their hockey careers and lives. They may be missing a full season or not building the same camaraderie as they normally would, but those obstacles can be overcome with a concrete program.
“I think there’s a lot of challenges that these young athletes are facing so by us creating a regime and a routine that they can plug into and be empowered with, has been so influential to get them to continue to have that passion for the sport that we all love.”
For many individuals in regards to their fitness, it seems that the pandemic has thrown them in one of two extreme directions. Some have gotten much more into working out from home or finding a new training program that works for them, while others have struggled to be as productive as they once were. This presents a great challenge for someone like Fujimagari. How do you convince people to walk down that positive path of wellness? What she told me was that it’s never about making the quantum leap to change your lifestyle, but rather making small incremental changes over time.
“Right now we’re dealing with athletes as young as seven years old up until 18 years old before they go to college, so during those instrumental years during their life it’s really getting them to see from this month to this month, ‘what were the changes that I made and how was that impacting my performance?'”
Fujimagari’s program develops a habit tracker with the athletes as well as putting together a food intake log in order to provide baselines for where the individual might be in regards to physical and mental fitness. Once they have that picture, a great plan can be mapped out to see what actions need to be taken to achieve their particular goals.
“If you give someone a big, big task, they’re not able to break it down into those pieces. So by having us to help coach them and help navigate and pivot whenever necessary, they’re able to really see that when you break it down into those incremental changes, then you’re actually able to get to your long term goal.”
These are not skills you often learn until you get “to the big leagues”, Fujimagari stressed. One of her main goals is to fill in those pieces to make every athlete’s dream a reality. For on ice performance, what Fujimagari and her brother really stress is being a student of the game and breaking down different game situations. She also knows that being a professional while coaching others is incredibly enlightening and inspirational.
“How often do you get to speak to a pro athlete day in and day out? How often to you get to have them as your coach while they’re still playing? It’s not very often,” she said with a smile. “Being a female athlete and having to look towards other resources to being in a financial position, while being able to continue playing hockey at the same time, it’s given me that opportunity to also have impact on the hockey community while playing.” Fujimagari was just in that position several years ago and is thrilled to give back.
The right stuff
When she was younger, Fujimagari was no stranger to having the bad years and losing track of what was good for her body. When she was 16 and going through hockey tryouts, she felt burnt out like many student athletes, and that overworking led her to not recover as well as she should have.
“I had gone away from eating healthy whole foods a little bit and was eating some more commercial foods with my friends. I wanted to fit in and just hang out with them,” she admitted, “I just let my health not be the priority.”
It was a big learning lesson for Fujimagari. She got sick much more quickly and that made her realize that the fuel you put into your body is either going to be beneficial or detrimental. “As an elite athlete you see that happen even faster because your body’s under so much stress because of the demands of your body and mind.”
“Having that happen at such an early age, it made me commit that much more. It made me hungry to learn how to properly fuel my body not just as an athlete but as a hockey player.”
She also made a point of saying that fueling a hockey player is far different than fueling any other athlete. The season is longer and the turnaround is dramatic, so foods often have to be fairly specific to be eaten at specific times. Learning that science is what Fujimagari preaches more than just about anything else. While avocado toast may be a hit with the millennials and Gen-Z individuals, it won’t be the best snack to have before an on ice session.
The Bubble
For the NWHL’s bubble season in Lake Placid, Fujimagari acted not only as a regular goaltender with the Connecticut Whale, but was an EBUG (emergency backup goaltender) for the league’s remaining teams who are not independently owned. While she only made one official start, she said the work she was able to do was an amazing experience. Her ability to work remotely also helped her get more valuable ice time.
“That really allowed me to be able to jump on extra practices, or if a team needed a goalie for a specific goalie session or shooting session. I was fortunate to be in that position.”
She also worked during that time as a consultant for Arbonne, a company that for years has created different products for skincare, cosmetics and vegan nutrition. The bubble sadly didn’t end the way hockey fans had hoped and Fujimagari needed to pack up and head back to work at YEA. Starting a new routine for her was a quick adjustment like most seasons, but she wanted to continue to focus on what more she could do to have structure and help others.
“How can I serve? How can I show up better? How can I inspire people more?” These questions and more are what Fujimagari asked everyday when it came to the well-being of her clients. She wants every single day to be an opportunity for greatness for herself and others. That’s been the type of person she has been ever since her Maine days when roommates, friends and teammates would look to her for what to cook and what good foods to buy.
The end goal of the work
At the end of the day, one of the biggest goals for Fujimagari and many female athletes is impact. She has never lost appreciation for how much impact she has on fans and other young women who look up to her in hockey. All of that makes her job as an inspiring nutritionist so much more worthwhile.
“These young girls understanding that we’re just humans as well, and we love the sport just as much as you young girls do. I think it’s really important for them to see because it makes their vision for making this a reality, and taking this to the next step that much clearer.” Fujimagari knows that the more they get involved with the community the brighter the future is for girls to see.
As for the future, Fujimagari simply wants to remain in the hockey community, whether it’s purely as a player or a leader off the ice. She loves the sport and what hockey can provide to people and the doors it can open for others, along with the character you can build. “How you do one thing is how you do everything,” Fujimagari says, “Everything that I’ve learned in hockey and every challenge that I’ve faced, it’s built me to be a better person, developed my character, and enabled me to really learn a lot. If I can pay that forward to a younger athlete and be able to be apart of their journey, I think that’s extremely rewarding and that’s where I hope to be.”
If you want to learn more about Young Elite Athletes, visit their website here.
Mariah’s Arbonne website here.
Sam Fryman Sports Writings 