Hockey

U.S. Women’s National Team Makes the Most Of Evaluation Camp


“Obviously, we didn’t know when we would be together ahead of the [Women’s World Championship] in the spring,” forward Brianna Decker said. “We’re thankful to have a camp, and I think it’s great for the coaches to be able to see the talent and player pool we have moving forward.”

The camp began the process of choosing who will represent the U.S. at the 2021 World Championship in Halifax and Truro, Nova Scotia. The organization is also about a year-and-a-half from the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China.

“We still need to continually evaluate our national team players and see what we have coming up in our development pool,” Million said. “We felt it was important to get this evaluation camp in, especially when the NCAA has not started its season yet. It gave us a really good opportunity to bring in some of those NCAA players and younger players while doing this evaluation in a safe manner.”

One such player is Wisconsin junior Britta Curl, a rising star within the program, who was named to the roster for the 2020 IIHF Women’s World Championship, an event that was canceled because of the pandemic.

“There are a lot of past Olympians and national players, so it’s really good to have that kind of exposure to the speed of the game,” Curl said. “I personally wanted to gain confidence playing with elite players here. It’s a time for me to show the coaches and the program who I am as a player and give it my best shot to make teams in the future.”

Curl feels fortunate that she’s been able to train daily with her teammates at the University of Wisconsin.

“Everyone doesn’t have the luxury of being on a team that’s able to practice every day,” Curl said. “The first couple months of the pandemic, it was definitely hard to adjust, working out on your own and finding ways to keep your skills sharp. But for a month or so, we’ve been having full team practices, so I feel like I was in a pretty good spot coming into the camp.”

Early in the pandemic, Decker mostly worked out in her basement and also trained outside. As the camp neared, the two-time Olympian found a way to be ready for the week-long event.

“I think the coaches are probably more thankful than anything to be able to see the players and evaluate as much as possible,” Decker said. “But it’s also great for us as players to know where we are and know where we stand compared to other players. The only thing you can really do is hold yourself accountable during these weird times and just make sure you’re hitting numbers that you want to hit.”





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