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Saturday 22 March 1997

MS. HOCKEY
                                    
Superstar: If Gretzky was a woman his name would be Wickenheiser

Roy MacGregor
The Ottawa Citizen

It is a story that, in time, may enter the sacred mythology of the
game. They will tell of Hayley Wickenheiser's midnight skate as they
tell the story of the neighbour dropping off a pair of old skates in
the poor Floral, Sask., home where Gordie Howe was growing up.

It will become women's hockey's equivalent of Pierrette Lemieux
packing snow onto her living room carpet in Montreal so her child,
Mario, could play indoors, of Walter Gretzky taking his son, Wayne,
out on to the back yard rink in Brantford, Ont., and teaching him to
carry a puck around Javex bottles, of Réjean Lafleur going into his
son's bedroom in Thurso, Que., and finding 10-year-old Guy sleeping in
his hockey gear, fully dressed for the weekend.

Hayley Wickenheiser's story takes place in Shaunavon, Sask., on a
clear, cold December night in 1985. Tom and Marilyn Wickenheiser are
lying in bed when they hear a mysterious noise. It is not the baby,
Jane. They know it cannot be the four-year-old, Ross, nor
seven-year-old Hayley, both of whom went to bed earlier, exhausted,
from a long day of playing on the neighbour's rink.

Tom Wickenheiser hears the noise again. They have just had the kitchen
redone, so perhaps it is just new wood settling. He gets up and goes
downstairs: nothing. He goes to the sink for a drink and stands there,
staring out at the night. A clear sky, probably 20-below -- and still
only a little past midnight.

The sound again. He leans into the window, staring, and across the
yard and across the alley, he sees something moving. A small shadow
moving up and down the rink in the dark. And the sound again -- of
course: The sound of a puck on a stick.

"I knew there would only be one person who'd be out there," he laughs.


His seven-year-old daughter had been out for more than an hour. She
had slept, wakened, and slipped out with her equipment after she knew
her parents were asleep.

"It didn't matter about the light," Hayley Wickenheiser remembers, "I
could feel the puck."

Perhaps no one in women's hockey feels it better these days. Only 18
years old, Hayley Wickenheiser is referred to as "the franchise" by
officials in Canadian Hockey. She is the inspiration for tomorrow's
players; she is the hope for today.

If this country is going to emerge triumphant in the Women's Hockey
World Championship that begins March 31 in Kitchener, much will depend
on the way the puck feels on the stick of Hayley Wickenheiser.

"I'm very excited," she says.

And with good reason, for consider for a moment how Hayley's comet has
shone: most valuable player in the gold medal game, 1991 Canada Winter
Games, named to the national team while still a 15-year-old bantam,
gold medal winner in the 1994 World Championship in Lake Placid, New
York, and earlier this month chosen player-of-the-game as she led the
Edmonton Chimos to the national championship.

In theory, she could be 19 years old next year with two World
Championships and an Olympic gold medal to her credit -- and still
with her best playing days ahead of her.

The first-year general sciences student at the University of Alberta
is one of the larger (5-8, 163 pounds) in the game, but also one of
the most skilled. A fine puck carrier with an excellent shot and
extraordinary strength, she models herself on her childhood hero, NHL
star Mark Messier, though she has often been referred to as "the Wayne
Gretzky of women's hockey."

Mr. Messier -- and to a lesser extent, Mr. Gretzky -- became her role
models when she was that seven-year-old in Shaunavon, and it never
occurred to her that there was anything to prevent her from one day
joining their team, the Edmonton Oilers, and playing alongside her
male hockey heroes.

"I hadn't even heard of women's hockey until I was about 13," she
says. "My aspirations were to make the NHL, just like any other kid. I
was given that freedom to dream."

She was born at the right time and in the right place. It was no
longer the 1950s when Abigail Hoffman had to become "Ab" Hoffman so
she could play on boys' teams. The same year that Hayley Wickenheiser
took her midnight skate, Justine Blainey won her Supreme Court of
Canada decision to allow young women to play on competitive boys'
teams if they had the skills.

Hayley Wickenheiser most certainly had the skills. Since she was
barely able to walk, she had pestered her father, a science teacher,
to let her play the game he played for fun and the neighbourhood kids
seemed to play obsessively.

She was only four years old when, at the end of one of his
recreational games, Tom Wickenheiser brought her out onto the ice and,
for the first time, let her try skating with a stick and a puck.

"I was pretty bad," she says. But she also knew that she had found her
calling.

Shaunavon may have been a small town, but it was enlightened. Ken
Billington and Jerry Mitchell were minor hockey coaches more than
willing to welcome and encourage the youngster. Tom Wickenheiser also
coached her, and her mother, Marilyn, became the team's chief fund
raiser.

The other kids on the team, all boys, were glad to have her. "I don't
think they treated me any different," she says. But, in fact, they
did. She was, after all, the best player, the leader. "Really," she
says. "I had to be, being a girl. I was easier that way."

"They were very good about her being a girl," says Tom Wickenheiser.
"Actually, the parents gave us a harder time than the kids did."

The Wickenheisers are uncomfortable talking about it, but there were
often scenes when the Shaunavon team travelled to other small towns.
Parents would scream and swear from the stands; once three boys on an
opposing team chased a frightened Hayley through the rink lobby.

"Sometimes parents have a difficult time if a girl scores four or five
goals and beats their team," says Tom Wickenheiser.

It is a parent's tale Walter Gretzky would identify with. His own
superstar child, Wayne, used to have to switch jackets with teammates
before making the run from the visitors' dressing room to the parking
lot.

"No one writes about how bitter parents are," Walter Gretzky once
said. "I have been on both sides of the fence and the saddest part is
they don't realize they have the best gift of all, a normal healthy
boy. They are so busy resenting others who they think are better. They
cannot accept that some boys are twice, three or four times as good as
their son."

Or worse, that a girl could be twice, three or four times as good.

"She's very quick,'' says Marilyn Wickenheiser of her daughter. "Her
strong ability is to read the play so well -- that's helped her avoid
any bad hits.''

A few years ago the family moved to Calgary so Marilyn could return to
teaching and Hayley could find more competitive teams. She has played
both women's and young men's hockey, though the games are dramatically
different.

Women's hockey, she believes, is far more "European" in its approach,
with much more passing and more emphasis on team play.

Men's hockey, with its hitting, is far more physical, far more
concerned with scoring goals. Two years ago she was a late cut from a
superior midget male "AAA" team, but she still likes to play the male
game because of its high competitiveness.

"It's a different game," she says of women's hockey. "People are
surprised at how fast it is. They can't believe how much passing we
do.

"There's more to women's hockey than scoring. There's a respect out
there."

In the few years that she has been concentrating on the women's game,
she has seen it shift from "novelty" to a growing passion. When she
first came to national attention, it was always as the cousin --
albeit very distant -- of former NHLer Doug Wickenheiser. She has met
him but once. If they meet again, he will be her cousin.

Her own interest in the NHL game has diminished the more the league
sinks into clutch-and-grab hockey and tedious trap defences. "It's not
as exciting as it once was," she says. "I watch, but I sometimes get
bored."

It is the opposite of what women's hockey is currently going through
as national interest begins to rise around the World Championships.
Victory in women's hockey has become as much a matter of national
pride as victory in men's hockey has always been, and the shift in
public interest has had its effect on the life of the women's game's
youngest star.

"There's been a shift in what people expect of me now," she says. "I
notice a change in people."

It is also bringing change into her life. At the moment she is a
university student as well as a carded athlete, her income all of $800
a month. Hockey agents have called regularly over the past couple of
years. There is talk of a women's professional league starting up
sometime after the Olympics, and she admits to being very interested
in the prospects.

Easton, the large hockey stick manufacturer, has contacted her about
an endorsement contract.

"I'm just going along for the ride," she says. "All I ever want is to
never have to buy a hockey stick again."

Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen