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Girls Growth Fuels Golden Desire

By Minnesota Hockey, 12/16/14, 10:00AM CST

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The USA U-18 Women's National Team heads to Buffalo, NY for the 2015 IIHF U-18 World Championship on Jan. 5th.

It was nearly 17 years ago when the US Women’s Olympic Hockey team won the first Olympic gold medal for women’s hockey in Nagano, Japan. To this day, their achievement stands as a remarkable feat and an outstanding example of women’s athletic prowess in the United State, but perhaps, more importantly; it set the stage for an unprecedented period of growth and development in girls’ and women’s hockey.

In 1998, there were a total of 28,346 registered female hockey players in the United States.  5,668 of those players were from Minnesota.

Fast forward to the 2014 Olympics and those numbers more than doubled. Minnesota reached 12,561 female players, and the nationwide total swelled to over 67,000 girls and women hockey players.

As this year’s US U-18 Women’s National Team head coach Joel Johnson can attest, that growth has played a huge role in raising the level of skill in women’s hockey across local, national and international competitions.

“You’re very elite of the elite players are always going to be few and far between,” said Johnson. “What’s happened is the baseline level of talent has grown exponentially, and that’s been really exciting. When I think about back 15 years ago, when I was out watching girls high school games, compared to what it is now, it’s just so encouraging.”

Johnson began coaching girls’ hockey, prior to the 1998 Olympics, at the high school level after graduating from Bethel University. Shortly thereafter, he joined the coaching ranks at Bethel and has spent nearly 20 years at the college level between positions at Bethel and the University of Minnesota.

Being so engrained in the hockey culture here in Minnesota, Johnson takes pride in seeing the commitment and dedication at the local level that gives so many girls the opportunity to play and develop. He also believes those efforts in each community across the state are a huge reason why there are eight players with Minnesota youth or high school hockey connections on this year’s US U-18 team.

“I’m proud to say that Minnesota hockey continues to set trends in terms of the number of girls that we support and encourage and develop at the national level,” said Johnson. “That doesn’t mean that we’re better than everyone else. It just means that from a broad base stand point we’re continuing to put an emphasis on teaching and growing the game at the very, very youngest levels.”

“The more young girls and female athletes we can attract to the game of hockey, the more we’re going to see them develop into great players.”

The pyramid approach, where the focus is on growing the base of players in order to increase the number of top players, has been proven to be more factual than simply a philosophy, and it’s working not just, in the Minnesota or the US, but across the world.

In the early days of women’s hockey, the gap between North American teams and the rest of the world was significant.  The Canadian team dominated play throughout late 80’s and early 90’s, going ten years without a loss in international play. It wasn’t until 2006 when the US or Canada was beaten in the Olympics the first time.

Those days are fading quickly as other countries around the world have invested significant time and resources into girls’ hockey and are starting to experience the rewards for their efforts at the highest levels.

“If you look back to the last world championships, both US and Canada had a very difficult semifinal to reach the gold medal,” said Johnson, who expects to face a stiff test from each team in the tournament.

The 2015 US U-18 Women’s National Team enters the IIHF U-18 Women’s World Championship in Buffalo looking to break Canada’s streak of three consecutive gold medals. With nine returning players from last year’s silver medal team and after several summer and fall camps together, Johnson believes the team is unified around their desire to compete for the top prize.

“They could be from the Midwest… from the Northeast or the Southwest – it doesn’t matter,” said Johnson. “They want to win a gold medal for the USA, and that’s all they really care about.”

If the team is going to have success, it will likely stem from great play on the blue line. Five of the returning members are defenseman, including Grace Bizal (Minnetonka, MN) who had three assists in five games and Jincy Dunne (O’Fallon, MO), the reigning Directorate Award winner for Best Defenseman in the tournament.  The team also returns goaltender Kaitlin Burt (Lynn, MA) who had a 92.86 save percentage in two wins.

Rebecca Gilmore (Wayland, Mass.) is the leading scorer returning from last year’s team and will be asked to lead a group of forwards that for the most part will be donning the USA jersey for the first time in an official international tournament.

“It’s an incredible honor to wear the sweater for the first time – or even to stand on the bench – to represent your country at a national event,” said Johnson, in regards to the newcomers. “Instead of trying to down play the nerves, I’m going to tell them to enjoy the moment and just to say, ‘Hey, you get a chance that thousands of kids want to have the opportunity to enjoy this same chance. You get the opportunity to do it.’”

“Here’s the deal. The puck drops and everyone has to play.”

And as they take the ice, the puck drops and the battle for gold ensues, the next generation of girls hockey players will again be inspired by watching and hearing about them before taking the ice themselves at a local rink.

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