USA Hockey Magazine

The answer was to play against the best competition they could find—again through the force of their tal- ent and will—and that meant again knock- ing on the door to play with the men. W h i tt e n H a m l e n m a d e t h e b i g g e st splash, but Dyer Hayes wasn't far behind. Both made their pro debuts in the 1993- 94 season and recorded games in 1994-95 and 1995-96. Still just a kid at 21, Whitten Hamlen played in a men's pro team in Toledo, Ohio, where she became the first woman t o w i n a m e n 's p r o f e s s i o n a l h o c k e y game, then on to Dallas, Utica, N.Y., and Muskegon and Flint, Mich. But pro hockey was for more than head- lines or win totals. "My end goal was always to play at the highest level with the national team," Whitten Hamlen says. "I knew I wasn't going to go to the NHL. I just knew based on my size, based on who I was, based on the timing, it just wasn't something I thought was going to happen for me. It didn't mean I didn't want to try, but I was realistic about it. My goal was to basically be in a position where I could get all the practice I could and the games were a bonus for me. My job [was] to be ready for the national team and the Olympics." Dyer Hayes was also just trying to stay sharp during her time playing with men. "We had no place else to play," she says. "I had a greater purpose and that was playing for Team USA." By 1997 at the Women's Worlds in Ontario, Team USA's goaltenders for head coach Ben Smith were Whitten Hamlen and Sarah Tueting. Canada won gold in OT. Whitten Hamlen was feeling the pres- sure, too. "I knew it in the spring of '97 with the Worlds, where I was like, 'OK, that's another silver medal and I have to turn the corner at some point," she says. "And there was a lot more pressure going into that pre- Olympic tour year because I hadn't won a g old medal. So I think I mentally put myself in a position where I didn't play my best hockey." In the end, neither Whitten Hamlen nor Dyer Hayes would go to Nagano. But both were rooting for Team USA. "It was kind of meant to be," says Dyer Hayes of the gold-medal win. "People would ask me as if they would expect me to be upset that I got cut from a team that won the gold. My feeling is that it was just meant to be. Obviously in '98, Sarah Tueting, in the way she played and performed, she was a difference maker. And so it just really makes it feel like it was meant to be that way." Coyne, one of those inextricably tied to the Nagano win, can't see that opportu- nity in history happening without Dyer Hayes or Whitten Hamlen. "Everybody loves the Olympics," Coyne says. "So, when people look to us and say, 'Oh, my goodness, they are legends and trailblazers,' I get what they're saying. But by virtue of having the history that I have, I know that's not true. Women's hockey is not where it is today without Kelly Dyer. Without Erin Whitten. Without Cindy Curley. Without Tina Cardinale. Without Stephanie Kelly. It all matters. We just happened to be at that place where the world was able to see it." Whitten Hamlen would make one more Team USA appearance, in 1999, after 30 // JUNE 2022 T he Goalie Issue USAHOCKEYMAGAZINE.COM "Women's hockey is not where it is today without Kelly Dyer. Without Erin Whitten. Without Cindy Curley. Without Tina Cardinale. Without Stephanie Kelly. ...We just happened to be at that place where the world was able to see it." – COLLEEN COYNE PHOTOS BY Jim Stankiewicz; USA Hockey Magazine Archives

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