There have been a number of articles posted recently re: Olympic Women's Ice
Hockey, so I thought everyone on the List might enjoy the following article
from Sunday's Washington, DC "Post."  Despite the author's intention to no
doubt present as condescension-free an account as possible, IMHO she wasn't
altogether successful.  But y'all can decide for yourselves :-)  Parenthetical
comments [] and typos are mine ....
 
Hard to Separate Women's Hockey From Men's
------------------------------------------
[by] Christine Brennan, Washington "Post"  7/1/93
 
What wears mascara, worries about her nails, dresses like a girl and has all
her teeth ?  Would you believe, a women's ice hockey player ?  On Friday, for
the first time ever, a U.S. women's all-star ice hockey team played a game on
a national stage, at the U.S. Olympic Festival.  Women will compete for
Olympic medals in hockey for the first time in Japan in 1998.
 
The fact that Friday's game occurred in a city baking in 100-degree heat, just
a slap shop form the Mexican border, shouldn't for a minute diminish its
importance.  It was the United States vs. Canada, with Team USA winning 6-3
[sic], and while we're not talking about Brett Hull and Mario Lemieux, the
quality of play was good.  How good ?  Well, when you first walked into the
Alamodome, the only dome in America where you have a choice of buying a
ticket or renting a midsize, you couldn't tell from a distance if men or
women were playing.  That's very good news for the women.  They skate swiftly,
they wear the same ugly uniforms [sic] and bulky pads the men wear, and they
slap some hard shots past the goaltender.  It's not like women's basketball,
which suffers visually in comparison to the men's game because of speed, size
and strength differences.  In hockey, the discrepancies aren't quite as
obvious because skates are the great equalizer: they make everyone look fast.
 
As of Friday, there are now witnesses to this sport, people who actually have
seen women play hockey in the Unites States - and liked what they saw [it's
not like women's hockey didn't exist before Friday - I guess all of us who've
watched women's hockey for *years* don't count ??].  And what exactly did it
look like ?  We'll take the questions in order of importance:
 
Q: Do they fight ?
A: No. "There aren't really any 'goonettes' in our game," said U.S. star Cammi
   Granato, younger sister of Tony Granato of the LA Kings.  The women's game
   is comparable to the men's international game.  There is body contact, but
   no open-ice hitting.  You have to go for the puck first.  The only fighting
   Granato ever has seen in her career was in youth hockey, when she played on
   boys' teams.  "I had a couple guys try to run me," she said. "One time, when
   I was 13, I was playing in a tournament in Kansas City, and I dumped the
   puck in and about 20 seconds later this guy decked me.  He gave me a con-
   cussion and I missed the next game."  As she lay there, she lifted her head
   up from the ice and what she saw made her smile.  Several of her teammates -
   all boys - were pummeling the kid who hit her.  "My teammates were in the
   penalty box the whole game," she said proudly.
 
Q: Do they *really* have all their teeth ?
A: Yes.  Women wear all the equipment: mouth guards [sic], face guards or
   masks, and helmets.
 
Q: Do they have scars on their faces ?
A: No.  See above.
 
Q: Do they wear special chest protection ?
A: Yes.  Next question.
 
Q: Are all the players rather, um, heavyset ?
A: No.  "People think we're 200 pounds with no teeth," said Granato, 22, who
   is 5'7" and weighs 140 pounds.  "When I tell people what I do, they say,
   'You don't look like a hockey player.'"  Said Karen Kay, Team USA head
   coach and and coach of the University of New Hampshire women's team:
   "When they walk in, they look like ladies."  This week, Granato was even
   growing her nails.
 
Q: How did they start playing the game ?
A: Just like the boys did.  "It was during the Bobby Orr era in Boston," said
   Kay, 29.  "I was eight years old.  It didn't matter if you were a little
   boy or a little girl, you wanted to play hockey."  Granato played with her
   three older brothers in the Chicago suburbs where they grew up.  "I wanted
   to do whatever they did," she said.  "I got kicked around a little bit, but
   I never quit.  There was a pond right across the street from our house when
   I was little.  We'd come in for dinner, leave our skates on, and then go
   back out after we ate."  Granato's family tested her.  When she was 6 or 7
   years old, her brother Rob, who is two years older, gave her a bloody nose.
   "I think he thought I was going to go cry to Mom," she said.  What *did*
   she do ?  "I just punched him in the nose."
 
Q: Just how serious a sport is this ?
A: Very serious, and getting more so every day.  When a sport becomes a full-
   medal Olympic sport, which women's ice hockey did last summer, it gains
   instant legitimacy (excluding ice dancing and synchronized swimming, which
   always will be silly).  In the United States, 6,000 girls and women and
   300,000 boys and men play ice hockey.  In Canada, the numbers are 20,000
   and 450,000.  Because money now will be funneled into all levels of women's
   ice hockey in the United States through USOC grants, participation should
   grow considerably in the next five years.
 
   There have been two World Championships, in 1990 and 1992, each won by
   Canada, with the US winning the silver medal both times.  Granato was the
   leading scorer in the 1992 tournament with eight goals and two assists.
   Everyone's looking ahead to '98.  Six nations will compete in the sport at
   those Olympics.  Because the US women will have a decent shot a winning a
   gold medal (which is unlikely for the US men), you can bet the USOC - and
   US TV networks - will pay attention.
 
Q: Do they all want to be like Canadian goaltender Manon Rheaume and make it
   to the NHL, even if it's only a ploy for publicity ?
A: Are you kidding ?  Women don't look at the NHL as a model, they look at it
   as something to avoid.  John Marchetti, Granato's coach at Providence
   College, quit coaching boys' hockey 12 years ago.  "I wa fed up with the
   ego problems," he said.  "The men's game has deteriorated to the point
   where they go into the corner and just try to kill somebody.  That isn't
   hockey as I learned it."
 
Q: Finally, will people attend women's hockey games ?
A: Probably not.  Just a couple hundred fans were in the seats for the game
   Friday afternoon.  Perhaps people really do go to hockey games just for
   the fights.
 
                                Cheers from the Chesapeake - Jim
 
 Jim Love <[log in to unmask]> Univ. of Maryland System / Solomons, Md (USA)