URL:http://www.canoe.ca/HockeyWomen/apr5_sacrifice.html

April 5, 1997

CERTAIN SACRIFICES: THE GYPSY IN GOAL
                                    
 KITCHENER, Ont. (AP) -- Erin Whitten is used to the tough,
in-your-face play of men's minor league hockey, not the long stretches
she has spent standing idle in goal at the Women's World
Championships.
 Still, the Team USA star is happy to be where she is: playing her
best without having to dress in a separate locker room.
 Whitten has played all but 16 minutes of the United States' first
three games, allowing three goals on 48 shots -- all in a 3-3 tie with
Finland.
 Like her counterpart on Team Canada, Christian Dube, Whitten has
spent long stretches standing in her crease, one arm draped along the
crossbar of her goal or shifting from skate to skate, trying to stay
alert.
 "It's always a good first game in a tournament to get tested a little
bit, but not full out," she said diplomatically after facing only
about eight shots in a 7-0 defeat of Norway on Monday. At the other
end of the ice, Erika Wagner made a heroic effort to turn back 45 of
52 shots.
 Whitten, 25, of Glens Falls, N.Y., would like to be the first woman
to take home an Olympic gold medal for ice hockey, when the game makes
its debut at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
 Already she is the first American woman to play pro hockey, as well
as the first woman goalie to record a pro victory and the first to
play a position other than goal -- albeit only 18 seconds at forward
with the Colonial League's Flint Generals a year ago.
 The actual play is fairly similar in men's and women's hockey, she
said, at least from her point of view: "The men have a harder shot
most of the time, they're a little bit faster maybe. I don't have to
deal with the checking issue."
 Off the ice, it's a different story.
 "I can't go into the locker room with the guys and be the way I am
with the women. I guess I get more support from the women than I did
from the men, but that's just the way the men have always played the
game," she said.
 "I really don't have a bias toward one or the other. The men's game,
I'm at the bottom rung of the ladder, so it's highly competitive for
me to claw my way up there. In the women's game, I'm fairly at the top
and I'd like to stay there."
 Staying there means a gypsy life. Female ice hockey players not only
have to scrape up the money to play and survive but must put most
personal relationships on hold: There's no such thing as a pregnant
goalie.
 "I'm willing to put aside marriage, kids, whatever else," Whitten
said. "Everybody on this team has made a certain sacrifice and
everybody is willing to make those sacrifices until Nagano and
possibly beyond."

SLAM! 
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