Team USA’s women’s hockey roster is much younger than Canada’s heading into Thursday’s gold medal match.
That means that, across the board, many more Canadian players have won an Olympics gold medal than those on the U.S. team have.
That doesn’t mean the United States is without experience in international championship matches, though.
Go back six years, to when key Team USA contributors Caroline Harvey, Haley Winn and Kirsten Simms were playing at the IIHF U-18 World Championships.
They were high school classmates then, part of Selects Academy at Bishop Kearney in Rochester, N.Y.
Together, they played in that tournament in Slovakia. The year prior, Harvey and Winn had lost on the same stage.
This time, they beat Canada in overtime to claim the gold.
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The trio held a joint press conference afterward, and their words are fitting now.
Harvey said: “It’s definitely a day we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.”
Simms? “It’s the best feeling I’ve probably ever had.”
And Winn: “Just screaming the anthem at the end on the blue line is just the best feeling in the world.”
They now all have the chance to top that.
It’s the Olympics, a gold medal match on Thursday against a Canada team the U.S. already beat 5-0 in this tournament and has beat in seven games in a row.
Harvey, Simms and Winn can all write a whole new, brighter, gold medal chapter. And the chance to do it together, as part of a program that in so many ways has grown up together in the last few years, would be a fitting cap to these Olympic Games for Team USA.
