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The Hamilton Spectator

For week of Monday 31 March 1997

Team Canada role models

Their coach had cautioned them against it, but some couldn't resist
the temptation.

As Stacy Wilson inched by them in the narrow basement corridor a few
surreptitiously pinched her sleeve, a couple patted her back. One
tentative hand extended out of a hockey jacket and onto the 'C'
stitched to Wilson's sweater.

They had been warned to let her pass uninterrupted on her way to media
interviews, but these 10-year-olds, all members of a Barrie-area girls
hockey team, weren't going to let this moment slip by.

Team Canada was in town, and here was the captain. They were six
inches away from a woman, who 10 months from now, will almost
certainly be an Olympic medalist.

"It's a great feeling to see young girls watch you play," says the
31-year-old Wilson. "It's a dream they have that we never had. They
see us play and they say 'hey, maybe I can do that too'. We want to
present a positive image to these girls and I think we do."

Without doubt.

On Friday, Wilson was named captain for the duration of the World
Championships, which open tonight. But the honour could just as easily
have gone to icons France St. Louis or Angela James, or teenage
superstar Hayley Wickenheiser.

"There are so many leaders on this team," says Wilson, "that everyone
wears the C every day."

And every one of them understands that while they are hockey players
first, they are role models and missionaries second and third.

"Which is one reason we are so close," says Wilson.

With the fourth World Championships -- Canada has gone undefeated in
winning the previous three -- being held on the periphery of the
biggest hockey media market in the world, and the elevation of the
sport to full-medal status for the 1998 Olympics, women's hockey has
its most glorious opportunity in its 105-year history.

The first documented game was played in, fittingly, Barrie back in
1892. And the women's game has come a long way since.

But until the first official world championships were held seven years
ago, women's hockey was a regional passion, personified by James, St.
Louis and the likes of Hamilton goalie Cathy Phillips, who has become
part of local lore.

But the game lacked a credible international forum: the stage where
legends are not only born, but nurtured and ripened.

Now it has the Worlds and next winter it has the Olympics. It also has
the stars, among them American Cammie Granato, Finn Sari Krooks,
Chinese goalie Hong Guo, Russian shooter Ekaterina Pashkevich, and
several Canadians.

Barring upsets of Olympian proportions, it will be the relentless
Canadian squad vs the ever-improving Americans in the gold medal games
Sunday and next February.

And you know what CBS will do with that. The women's hockey final
could conceivably be the most riveting two hours of the Nagano Games.

"The Olympics will put women's hockey on the map where it's never been
on the map," acknowledges Wilson.

"People watch the Olympics who've never followed sport before."

And that should have the desired effect. In the slipstream of the
three previous world championships, women's and girls hockey is
already mushrooming in North America. Registration in Canada is more
than 25,000 and climbing.

"It's tough to sit here and project that we're going to double
enrolment," says Bob Nicholson, vice-president of Canadian Hockey.

"But this will have a huge effect."

One effect could be an ice-time crunch.

Sports entrepreneurs have started to court women's hockey and it's
part of the overall optimism fueling an incredible wave of
private-sector arena construction across the continent. But even so,
will there be enough facilities -- with the right attitude -- to
accommodate the post-Nagano boom?

"If we go to 50-60,000 members in the next couple of years, I'm sure
we'll be asking 'where will they play and at what hours?'," says
Nicholson. "We'll have to utilize our resources better."

But some problems are nicer to have than others. Better an
overwhelming demand than a dwindling one.

And better that young female players have other females, rather than
males, to pattern themselves after.

Team Canada head coach Shannon Miller understands this, and
understands that it's part of her role to help foster that belief and
hope in young fans.

"When we were playing, we never had anything like this," says Miller,
whose great playing career ended in 1989. "Our role models and heroes
were all NHL players. It's preferable to have female role models.

"Real dreams, you know?"

QUICK FACTS

- Starting today, the world's top eight women's hockey powers compete
for the world crown. The top five finishers qualify for the 1998
Winter Games where women's hockey has full medal status for the first
time.

- Canada is favoured to win a fourth consecutive world title. The
United States is a close second.

- Other nations competing are China, Russia, Switzerland, Finland,
Norway, Sweden.

- Canada plays its first game tonight against Switzerland in
Kitchener. China and Russia play at 7 p.m. at Mountain Arena in
Hamilton. Tickets are $8.

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