The Role I Played: Canada’s Greatest Olympic Hockey Team

Though much less recognized than the men’s teams, the Canadian and American women’s Olympic hockey teams are powerhouses, consistently making it to every final and battling each other for the gold. Here, Canadian goalie Small provides a look at some of those battles. While not uncommon for top women players to land hockey scholarships to highly competitive universities, Small was in her third year as an engineering major at Stanford on a track and field scholarship when she received the invitation to tryouts for the Canadian women’s national team. The narrative starts from that point, and continues through the years she played with the team, including the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics. Glimpses of her childhood and life outside of hockey come into view, but the main focus is the roller-coaster ride of striving to compete at the sport’s top level.