“Inside Out 2” is now playing in theaters. A former Colby College hockey player consulted on the film. Courtesy Disney/Pixar

In her job at Pixar, Tracey Roberts brings drawings of characters to life by virtually sculpting their forms and defining their range of motion. But when filmmakers needed someone with hockey expertise to help with “Inside Out 2,” the former Colby College athlete found herself in a different role.

Released in June and still playing in theaters, “Inside Out 2” reintroduces viewers to Riley, a young girl who plays hockey and endures the physical and emotional intensities of the sport. Roberts can relate.

Roberts, who grew up in Boston and now lives in Oakland, California, played on the Colby College hockey team in the late 1980s, when it was an NCAA Division I program.

“It was super fun, but it was a lot of work. It was like a full-time job,” she said. “I love skating, so it was a great escape for me.”

These days, she spends her Saturday mornings at the Oakland Ice Rink, running a hockey development program for 4- to 18-year-old girls.

“The director, Kelsey Mann, and the producer, Mark Nielsen, found out that I coached and played hockey,” she said. “So I started talking to Kelsey a bunch about story ideas that he had, different plays and basic ideas.”

Roberts said people who were working on the film would ask her if things looked right or if they were understanding specific rules of the game correctly.

“I tried to be a little bit hands off and wait until people approached me,” she said. “When I was working on other projects, I would log on via Zoom and listen in about all the hockey shots, kind of in the background. Then if they had a question, I was at least there.”

Roberts, whose official job title is “character technical director,” helped the animators understand how to make Riley look natural while skating and taking off her helmet and mouth guard.

“I also would take videos of the girls (I coach) at their games, and they get so excited. They’re so silly,” she said. “The boys are silly too, but the girls are just so happy to be on the ice.”

Colby alumni Tracey Roberts, pictured here behind of one her players, runs a development program for girls aged 4 to 18 at Oakland Ice Rink in the Bay Area. She also coaches youth hockey for the San Jose Sharks. Courtesy of Tracey Roberts

Brendan Beesley, an animator at Pixar who worked on “Inside Out 2,” said Roberts’ support was integral to the movie’s success. Beesley has been at Pixar since 2013; his first project was the first “Inside Out” movie. He played hockey throughout his childhood and into college, and he said hockey brought him and Roberts together just over a year ago.

“There are not a lot of hockey players at Pixar, so when you meet someone who has a passion for hockey and knowledge about it and you connect, it’s really fun,” he said. “You can dissect the scenes and the plays together.”

Beesley said Roberts, because of her coaching background, was especially helpful with making the animation more accurately reflect how young girls skate.

“Kelsey (Mann) leaned heavily on her,” Beesley said. “Whenever something hockey-related would come up, he’d look around the room like, ‘Where’s Tracey?'”

The filmmakers even named a character after Roberts to show their gratitude, calling Riley’s coach “Coach Roberts.”

The film was in the works for four years, which is a fast turnaround for Pixar, Roberts said. While they usually aim for that timeframe, she said, in actual fact making a film often takes longer.

“They made a movie that is really going to help people,” she said. “It’s a beautiful movie, and it talks about mental health and balance and love.”

Roberts hopes the film resonates with other female athletes as it did for her.

“At this point, I’ve seen it four times. Obviously, there are a lot of nostalgic moments for skating when I was in high school and college, and it feels so real,” she said. “Every time I see it, I catch something else, and the big moments hit even harder than they did the first time.”

Roberts said she was grateful for the chance to help with the film – as she is for her time at Colby.

“I have fond memories of painting by myself in the art studio, sledding down the Colby hill on cafeteria trays, getting snowed into the dorms freshman year and having to climb out the first floor window,” said Roberts, who majored in economics and art history and minored in studio arts.

An internship at a stop-motion company after Colby got her career off the ground. She subsequently worked on a number of films at Tippett Studio, including Marvel’s “Avengers” and “Soul Snatcher.” She’s been at Pixar for three years, where she worked on the short film “Self” before helping with “Inside Out 2.”

Roberts hasn’t been back to Colby since graduating but hopes to one day show her son, now 18, where she spent her college years.

“I would love to bring my kid up to Maine,” she said. “There’s just nothing like Maine.”