To clear up the confusion, women's hockey will apparently be a demonstration
sport in the 1998 Olympics (set for Japan, I believe) and will be a full-
fledged Olympic sport with official medals in the 2002 Olympics (no site
set yet as far as I know).
 
Along the same lines...I got a very interesting letter in the mail (real mail)
here at work yesterday.  Readers of this list who also read rec.sport.hockey
via news may remember seeing some posts from Andria Hunter there on women's
hockey; she played for UNH from 1986-90 and for Toronto (Univ. of, not the
Maple Leafs :-)) the past two years while working on her master's in CS.  Well,
Andria not only tried out for and made Team Canada for the 1992 Women's
World Championships in Finland, winning a gold medal back in April, but she
was the third-leading scorer in the entire tournament with 5 goals and 4
assists.  Anyway, Andria sent me some pictures of her in her Team Canada
uniform (#55 - same as Larry Murphy of Pittsburgh who played jr. hockey for
Peterborough, her home), holding her gold medal & the trophy, and signing
autographs for some young kids.  She also photocopied some local newspaper
articles about her & Team Canada which was nice, along with including a note
that she'll be playing in Switzerland next year.
 
So, I thought some of the UNH fans here would have liked to know that their
women players are doing well, too. :-)  As well the women's hockey fans here.
(Thanks to Andria for all this good stuff.  I'm pretty sure she's not on here,
but just in case she should see this - I've sent her email too.)
 
Speaking of which, doesn't Northeastern's athletic department look pretty
foolish right about now?  They deemphasized women's hockey after this past
season, forcing longtime coach Don MacLeod, who also had coached the first
ever Team USA women's team, to resign a few months ago, and one of the big
reasons they gave for deemphasizing the sport at NU was that it wasn't a big
enough worldwide sport; when MacLeod pointed out the push to get it in the
Olympics, the people at NU supposedly retorted that this wasn't likely to
happen anytime soon.  Right.  Thanks for playing...for a lovely parting gift,
we have this beautiful ceramic dalmatian and a copy of the preseason polls.
 
 
- mike, having an attack of verbosity this week
 
PS didn't I hear that the Ferraros, Dunham, and Montgomery are all turning
 pro too and that Cal Ingraham will leave school to join a monastery?  and
 that all of BU's fabulous freshmen from last year were declared academically
 ineligible for the 92-93 season?  and that a mistake was found and
 Merrimack's Agostino Casale was given one more year of eligibility?