For Kelowna's Abby Cook, a lot has happened in the past year.

The 26-year-old played a season in the Professional Women鈥檚 Hockey League (PWHL), returned home, made the decision to stay home, started coaching with Rink Hockey Academy (RHA), and now has started her own business inspired by her own experiences.

"As I started moving up in levels of hockey, I started finding myself in more stressful situations," Cook told Black Press Media. "I always just wanted to do my best and I noticed I was always thinking about things I had messed up on in games or didn't have a good practice the day before a game."

Cook played at the Pursuit of Excellence (POE) program in Kelowna, turning her play into a full-ride scholarship to Boston University (BU). After graduating in 2020 with a Health Sciences degree, she went on to play for the Djurg氓rdens IF in the Swedish Women鈥檚 Hockey League (SDHL), the Boston Pride of the Premier Hockey Federation (the league before the PWHL), Ladies Team Lugano in Switzerland in the 2022-23, before joining Minnesota's PWHL team for the league's inaugural season, which started in Jan. 2024.

In between some of those seasons, Cook took a step back from playing and coached RHA a couple of different times. 

Often in her playing career, she would question herself about what was going to happen next.

"Last year, the whole time I was in Minnesota, I often found myself thinking 'Am I going to get traded? Is this coming?'" said Cook. "My agent especially, my family, my friends they were like, 'you just need to focus on today. A lot of the stuff's out of your control."

As it turned out, Cook was part of PWHL history as she was involved in the league's first trade - a deal that sent her to Boston. 

After the season, the Kelowna native continued to train all summer and was ready for a call to head back to the PWHL. In October, she decided to stay home, becoming a full-time coach at RHA and starting her brand. Despite staying in Kelowna, Cook is not retired from the PWHL and said she would go back if the opportunity presented itself.

"I took a step back and I realized I'm in such a cool position right now and not a lot of people get to do this, and I just need to stay in the moment so that shift in mindset kind of led to Today The Label," said Cook.

That's the purpose and message behind her new business, to stay in the moment and be thankful for each day without worrying about the past or the future and finding the wins in everyday.

"Today is such a special concept, it means something different to everyone and that really inspired me," added Cook.

She made and designed a few hats and ordered them in October to share with just family and friends. Over the next couple of months, she drove into learning about how to run a business, taking the Google Marketing course, getting her certificate and talking to people in the industry.

Eventually, she designed the website in December and officially launched it on Thursday, Feb. 6. As of right now, only hats are available (with some already being sold out) but she has shirts on the way she's currently designing and hoping to add hoodies and other items as well.

Once she launched the website, she had many old teammates from her time at BU and in the PWHL reach out.

"A lot of my best friends are still in the PWHL so [the hats] are on their way to them," said Cook, who added she designed the hats but also took opinions from her brother and some friends.

As for the coaching side of her life, Cook is having a blast being a full-time coach for the first time.

"It's been awesome," said Cook. "I've been here in the past but the times I had been here before I knew that I was leaving so this time it's a little different cause I know I'm going to be here for the year and it's been awesome getting to know the girls and they're all super committed and very good hockey players so it's really fun."

She's coaching RHA's U18 female team with head coach Garrett Festerling, another first-time full-time coach.

"It's cool to get a new perspective from him because I've only coached with Chris Hogg in the past so it's different but Garrett's also new coaching female hockey so I've been teaching him in some ways, he's been teaching me in some ways so together we make a really good team."

Cook's new business can be found at .