United States Ends Gold Medal Drought for Women’s Ice Hockey
Gold medal game goes to sixth round shootout with winning goal by Jocelyn Lameroueux-Davidson
Players celebrate post win against Canada.
For the first time since the beginning of women’s hockey in 1998, the United States women hockey team won the gold medal at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games. The game ended in a shootout when Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson scored the winning goal for team USA in the sixth round.
The game ended with a score of 3-2. This is the first time in 20 years that Canada has fallen to the United States. Since the beginning of women’s hockey, Canada and the United States have played each other for the gold.
The game-winning shot was one Lamoureux-Davidson had practiced “a thousand times.” A coach nicknamed the shot “Oops! I Did It Again,” after the Britney Spears song, Marvin said.
At the last Olympic Games, in Sochi, Russia, the US women lost 3-2 to Canada in overtime. This loss fueled them to win in this year’s game.
This win is important for Team USA, not only because it is the most important competition they could participate in, but because they threatened to boycott if they didn’t receive equal treatment and working conditions. After waiting until the last minute, the team received a settlement that offered them a substantial pay raise, which put them back on the rink.
“To be able to come away with a win, to win from behind is something special. We played in this game in our minds a thousand times and won it every single way possible, and there’s just something unbelievable with this team,” said Monique Lamoureux-Davidson. In the next four years both teams will practice harder than ever. The next Olympic game could be anybody’s.
By Phwayne (Peter Wayne Photography, Boulder, CO,USA) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
