USA Hockey Magazine

boldly reaching out to ask for another chance from Smith after the 1998 cut—a move that suggests, yet again, just how much these goaltenders loved the game. "I've been bold my entire life, and I wasn't going to stop there," says Whitten H a m l e n . " W h a t d i d I h a v e t o l o s e ? I thought I played probably my best World Championship in that one. But, in the end, we still lost so I still couldn't pull out the gold medal." Silver again, but … "The silver lining to me is my response," Whitten Hamlen says. "I don't think I'd be coaching now if I made the Olympics. I think I'd be doing something else because success would have come too easily. Now I have more motivation to make my own players successful in what they are doing because I wasn't as successful as I would have liked by peoples' standards." This fall Whitten Hamlen will begin her eighth season behind the bench at Merrimack. From where she sits, she can certainly see that times have changed. "I still think it's hard, but I love the opportunities that women are getting," she says, pointing out the players who leave her program and continue to play h o c k e y p r o f e s s i o n a l l y w i t h w o m e n . "There's so much farther to go and there's so much more that has to happen, but the groundbreaking individuals in women's pro hockey, they are the people who have really started something that will continue for a lot of years." Dyer Hayes, once her Team USA playing days were over, also kept knocking on hockey 's doors, starting with Louisville hockey in product development, where she'd work to make equipment, like the game itself before that, better for girls and women. She's also went on to work for Easton and Brian's, and these days lives in Massachusetts and is a key account man- ager for Surgically Clean Air, whose clients include a couple of NHL teams. "I think it's important to honor the changes that have come [to women's hock- ey], but then to also recognize we have far to go," says Dyer Hayes who has spent a lot of time this past year thinking about Title IX on its 50th anniversary. "I have a position of gratitude but I see how things could get better." It never does take Dyer Hayes long to dwell on the positives of this unexpected life in hockey, either. "Look at the timing, how everything unfolded," she says. "As I'm graduating from college, the first-ever women's world championships. As I'm playing that level of hockey, Manon Rhéaume breaks the ice, if you will, of the image of women playing in men's professional hockey. As I progress from that into retirement, I'm one of the first women to work in the hockey industry on the equipment side. I've been extremely fortunate and I have tremendous gratitude for the opportuni- ties that unfolded in front of me and in front of my life." They may have unfolded, but they most assuredly did not fall out of the sky and into her lap. She did have to go looking and looking and looking again, knocking and knocking and knocking again. The same is true for Whitten Hamlen. "Just plain courage," Coyne calls it. "I can't imagine that it was easy. Not every- body on their men's teams welcomed them with open arms. But they did it anyway. They did it because they love the game and they wanted to prove that they could hang with that level of talent. And I think it helped move our sport forward." P James MacDonald is a freelance writer from Sandwich, Mass. P I O N E E R I N G P U C K S T O P P E R S Kelly Dyer Hayes, above left and at far right, can still feel the excitement of competing in the first IIHF Women's World Championship in 1990 in Canada. JUNE 2022 USAHOCKEYMAGAZINE.COM // 31

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