From andria Wed Oct 22 21:26:57 1997
To: HOCKEYRG@aol.com
Subject: Re: USA Hockey InLine Cup

Hi Richard,

>Congratulations on your win as Female Athlete of the Year. As you probably
>know by now, Shari Hitt accepted your award and everything worked out fine.

Thanks!  I've received a couple of e-mail messages from various people
that said she did a great job of reading my acceptance speech!
Excellent!  I still wish I could have been able to make it, but I just
couldn't afford to pay for the flight, and we couldn't find a sponsor
in time.  Oh well, I'm glad to hear that everything went well.  Thanks
for your hard work in organizing this event.  Shari said that you did a
great job and that things went very well!

>Anyway, I want to get your thoughts on the USA Hockey InLine Cup. I'm going
>to the printer with this issue soon and I realized, oh, oh, don't have any
>input from one special VIP!
>
>1. What was your overall assessment of the tournament? What did you think of
>the organization?

I thought it was very well organized.  It was nice how they were able
to have four rinks operating at the same time (right in the same
building - that place is huge!).  It always makes the tournament much
nicer when you don't have to drive from arena to arena for each game.

I liked how the game results were kept up to date on the big boards;
it seemed like they were updated almost immediately after the games
were played.  That's always nice from a player's point of view.

I liked the time schedule for USA Hockey Inline ... we didn't
have any 5:30 am games like at NARCh!

One thing that might be improved at the USA Inline is that four women's
games take place at the same time (on different rinks) so it makes it
harder to watch other women's teams play.  That's about all I can think
of for improvements, so that's pretty good!

>2. Is the competition getting better from the American teams? Will there be
>parity one day, or will the U.S. women get discouraged and quit the sport
>before that happens?

I think the gap keeps getting closer and closer each year.  I think
that the main advantage that the Canadian women have is that they
simply have had more hockey playing experience.  As the inline hockey
leagues become more developed in the US, that should give the women a
chance to gain more playing experience, and thus their game will
improve even more.  I think it's just a matter of practicing and
playing more.  They definitely shouldn't get discouraged, because they
have to remember that some of the women on the Canadian teams have been
playing ice hockey as much as 4 or 5 times longer than they have been
playing inline hockey.  It'll just take more practice and persistence.
From what I have seen, the US women have very good in-line
skating skills, but it is just a matter of working more on the puck
handling skills and the shooting skills.

>3. Was Team Hystyk the team you expected to meet in the finals?

After seeing some of the high scores that the West Coast Revolution
team had in the round robin play (22-0 and another really high score), I
was kind of expecting to see them in the final.  I didn't see the
semi-final game between Hystyk and the West Coast Revolution, but
apparently it was a close 4-3 game that could have gone either way.

>4. Any other random thoughts on the tourney?

I thought it was really nice to see so many women's teams from all over
the US and Canada involved.  I had fun meeting players from other
teams, and over-all I was impressed with the caliber of play and how
the tournament was run.  I look forward to competing again next year!

Take care,

Andria

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