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Women-in-Hockey Digest Wednesday, January 26 2000 Volume 01 : Number 589
In this issue:
Shannon Miller, Shawna Davidson & Stacy Wilson Great success at UMD!
Re: CanAM Camps
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Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 21:27:33 -0500
From: KL Sports
Subject: Shannon Miller, Shawna Davidson & Stacy Wilson Great success at UMD!
From
Nothing, A Great team Rises
SOPHIA HOLLANDER - New York Times on
the Web
DULUTH, Minn., Jan. 9 -- Shannon Miller was asleep last Wednesday
night when the phone rang. It was 2:15 a.m. Must be Finland. Miller, the
former Olympic and Canadian national women's hockey coach, leaned over,
picked up the phone and switched on the light. The scene has become the
norm for Miller over the past 18 months, while she has been recruiting a
dazzling array of international stars for the fledgling program at the
University of Minnesota-Duluth, where she is the head coach.
This time it was Tuula Puputti, the 22-year-old Finnish Olympic and
national team goalie, who was joining the Bulldogs the following Monday.
She had questions. Lots of questions. Should she bring her own equipment?
Was transportation provided to the rink? How much scholarship money was
available for books, housing, food? Could her boyfriend help coach, or
travel with the team?
Miller pulled up the covers to her neck to keep warm and talked to her
new No. 1 goalie. When they hung up the phone around 3:30 a.m., Miller
was too elated to fall back to sleep.
"I mean, the Finnish national team goalie is coming to play for
us," she said several days later. "It's kind of exciting."
Puputti will join another Finn, Hanne Sikio, and three other Olympians --
the United States gold medalist Jenny Schmidgall from Edina, Minn., and
Sweden's leading Olympic scorers, Erika Holst and Maria Rooth -- on a
squad that is undefeated (15-0-1), ranked fourth in the nation and headed
to Lake Placid, N.Y., for a tournament Jan. 21-22.
But if the Bulldogs are making noise in the Midwest, they are just the
most dramatic example of a women's hockey explosion in the Midwest. From
24 teams five years ago, the number of girls' teams in the Minnesota
State High School Athletic Association has rocketed to 112. On the
college level, seven Midwestern teams have sprung up within the last
three years, prompting the Western Collegiate Hockey Association to
create an official women's league.
With the influx of players and money, women's hockey has encountered the
problems more commonly identified with high-profile men's programs.
Miller said a rival coach accused her of illegal recruiting practices
during a league meeting, an accusation Miller emphatically denies. There
have also been rumors that international players will not graduate from
Duluth, but will leave to compete with national teams.
Several Bulldog players said that they may leave school to compete in the
Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 or the world championships this April,
but every player interviewed said she intended to return and graduate.
"I think hockey has always been No. 1 in my life, but it's very
important now to keep school on track, too," Holst said. Referring
to a dearth of professional hockey opportunities for women, she added:
"As it is now, you can't play hockey as a girl. I think you need to
get a degree. I think that it is kind of good that we have to get to a
certain point to be able to play, that we have to work hard in
school."
The hardest adjustment to living in a new country?
Pause.
"What's adjustment?"
It has been a series of adjustments for the nascent Bulldogs, who have
successfully confronted the challenges of luring a reluctant Miller to
the United States, overcoming the myriad rules and paperwork in
international recruiting, diffusing initial skepticism over women's
hockey in the city of Duluth and earning recognition for their program in
the hockey bastions back East.
Referring to the last skirmish, Miller said she has heard that the
at-large bid to the four-team year-end tournament will go to an East
Coast team, even if a better candidate plays in the West.
"That is totally false," said Val Belmonti, coaching program
director for USA Hockey and overseer of the final four. "And I think
she's being a little paranoid."
But it is indisputable that in the early season, the more games the
Bulldogs won, the farther they dropped in the polls. When they played the
fifth-ranked University of Minnesota, the Bulldogs were No. 8, despite a
record of 10-0-0. After sweeping the Golden Gophers Dec. 3-4, Duluth did
bounce up in the polls; the Gophers are sixth.
Through it all, the Bulldogs have emerged with their talent, humor and
record intact. A coaching staff with international experience has seen to
that.
Before they played the Gophers -- so far their biggest test of the season
- -- the players huddled in the locker room and nervous energy began to
seep in. The lights had been turned off, and players became increasingly
apprehensive -- about the game, about being a first-year program against
a national powerhouse, about the darkness.
Miller and her assistants, Shawna Davidson and Stacy Wilson, burst into
the room, dressed in black, wearing sunglasses and holding toy machine
guns. And they opened fire. The flashing lights of the guns sprayed
across startled faces. The lights flicked on, revealing the coaches
standing "Men in Black" style, with sunglasses and machine
guns, and everyone roared. Tension gone. Problem averted. And, three
periods later, game won, 5-4.
"It was just the perfect gesture because it helped us fall back into
that relaxed, confident mind-set we had established during the
week," the freshman forward Michelle Mackateer said. "And that
was essential to winning that game. If we had come out tired and nervous,
we wouldn't have been able to play the kind of game we did."
Brittny Ralph, the team's junior captain, had praise for the coach after
transferring to Duluth from the Gophers. "Coach Miller knows a lot
about the game, and she seems to be full of faith in the players,"
Ralph said. "She trusts us out there, so we want to play."
Miller initially refused the Duluth job because she did not want to work
with Americans. Eventually, Miller, whose full-time job was as a Calgary
police officer, decided to meet with people at the university. They were
nice. Americans, but nice.
Similarly, Schmidgall and Davidson, the assistant coach who is a Duluth
native and a three-time United States national team player, sheepishly
admit that they had reservations about playing for, or working with, a
Canadian coach.
"She doesn't let us do whatever we want," Schmidgall said of
Miller, "but she lets us do things within the limits. She makes it
fun. And she's hard on us when she needs to be."
Duluth's chancellor, Kathryn Martin, overcame Miller's doubts with offers
of total support in the start-up of an elite women's program.
"Learning to achieve at a very high level in one thing helps you
achieve at a very high level elsewhere," Martin said. "So if
you're going to offer something for developmental purposes within a
university, you should do it as well as you can, because that's what you
want people to learn: how to function at the level of their highest
potential."
In 1997, Martin and the new athletic director, Bob Corran, made a
$500,000 budget commitment to women's hockey, providing Miller with
scholarships -- the equivalent of nine this year, with a promise of 18 in
four years, equal to the number available to the men.
"There are long winters in Minnesota, and U.M.D. hockey is a big
part of how people get through the winter, and there has been a real
storied history with the men's program," Corran said, noting that
Brett Hull was a Bulldog. "We have season ticket-holders who have
been with us for 40 years. There are season tickets left in wills. There
are season tickets as part of divorce decrees. So there's a real
interest.
"We really felt that it was a natural step for us to get involved in
women's hockey," Corran added, "and that we had a unique
opportunity to be competitive immediately with the kind of coaching staff
that we were able to put together."
Although the men's team struggled recently, finishing 7-24-4 last season,
it has remained, Corran said, "part of the cultural fabric
here."
The women are averaging 953 fans a game. While Corran predicted that
attendance could be as high as 3,000 in a few years, the women draw
nowhere near as well as the men. There has been a running debate in the
letters section of The Duluth Tribune over whether the women are
receiving too much attention.
But the locals are coming around. After the Bulldogs' first victory over
the Gophers, a Duluth man who had been "really quite grouchy"
about women's hockey approached Miller in a Minneapolis-St. Paul
restaurant.
"It was like he was a different person," she said. "And
then he actually came to a game on Saturday night. So I laughed and I
thought, 'Whatever, it's just one more person who was skeptical and who
is now a supporter.' Small changes, you know? One step at a time."
From the following site-
http://www.nytimes.com
Karin Lofstrom
3492 Southgate Road
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1V 9P9
ph. (613)739-9948
fax (613)739-3316
email: email@hidden
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Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 00:17:06 -0500
From: "Sandy"
Subject: Re: CanAM Camps
Subject: Can/Am Camps
As Susan wrote...
I think someone on this list mentioned the Can/Am hockey camps a couple of
weeks ago. I'm looking at their brochure which vaguely indicates that women
participate in the Can/Am camps. Has anyone here attended the camp? If so,
I'd like to hear more about it.
Hi Ladies! Yes Im one of the women that attended last years
CanAm camp in Vegas. To give you some stats, there were 10
women rostered on the 4 teams training at the Ice Gardens. So
10 women out of 60 was a good turnout. You train with your team
and play games at the last hour of the day. The instructors were
great, just like the brochure states.
It was a wonderful but exhausting experience. With many
participants in their 40s & 50s, (Im approaching 50), we felt the
camp was a day too long. During the tournament many were
dragging & just burned out with 4 hours daily ice time. The
constant change from the air conditioned New York casino where
most of us stayed, going outside into the 100 deg heat, then back
to the cool rink had an affect.
Would I do it again? Yes but not until I attend the Lake Placid
camp in June, where it will be cooler. That camp is a day shorter
with more participants. So i feel the energy level will be there at the
end, when it is needed the most for the tourny.
I met some wonderful people, and had a good time, except for
getting sick the last day. Several people did get sick. I would
recommend being in the best condition you can attain prior to
attending a camp.
As a side note, I WILL be going back to Vegas next month for
the Womens hockey classic. Iv been fortunate to be picked up by
the Columbus Capitals who needed players. Northeast Ohio doesnt
have a senior womens travel team currently, so several of us try to
latch on to other teams.
Sandy (Selanni)
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Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 14:27:46 -0600
From: "Craig Roberts"
Subject: [none]
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Subject: MINNESOTA WOMEN'S HOCKEY
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MUZERALL EARNS SECOND WCHA PLAYER OF THE WEEK HONOR
With an eight-goal performance in sixth-ranked Minnesota's series sweep of
Bemidji State, Friday and Saturday, junior Nadine Muzerall has been named as the
Western Collegiate Hockey Association-Women's League Player of the Week.
The honor is the second of the season for Muzerall, who earned the league's
first-ever weekly award Oct. 18. She earned this week's award by scoring three
times in FridayÍs 6-1 win over the Beavers. Saturday, she opened the game with a
natural hat trick and her five goals and seven points set new school records.
Muzerall has recorded hat tricks in three consecutive games and has an
eight-game point and goal-scoring streak, during which time she has scored 16
goals and 22 points. The Gophers are 17-2-0 this season when she scores a goal
and 52-5-2 over the last three seasons when she has scored a goal, compared to
an 11-12-4 mark when she has played and not scored a goal.
Minnesota plays its final non-conference this weekend, hosting fourth-ranked New
Hampshire at 1:05 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Mariucci Arean.
- --------------------------------------
Craig Roberts, University of Minnesota
Assistant Sports Information Director
Phone: (612) 624-0522 Fax: (612) 624-8018
Check out the Gophers on the Web at http://www.gophersports.com
Or call the Diet Coke Gopher Sports Hotline at (612) 626-STAT
GO GOPHERS!
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End of Women-in-Hockey Digest V1 #589
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