Sports

GOING FOR THE GOLD

By Paul Perillo

Northeastern has long been a power in women's ice hockey, winning the unofficial national title in 1988, 1989, and again last year. Now a Husky hopes to take her game to the international stage. At the inaugural Olympic women's hockey competition next month in Nagano, Japan, it's likely that Shelley Looney, BPH'95, will be part of the team. Another former N.U. player, Jeanine Sobek, BPH'95, just missed out on making the Olympic squad.

Looney, a member of the U.S. national teams since 1992, overcame two serious injuries in 1997 to make the twenty-five-player squad that is playing exhibition games this month in preparation for the Olympics.

"Shelley is one of the top players in that program," says Heather Linstad, the Northeastern women's coach. "She has quick feet, good hands, and speed. She makes a lot of things happen-she's good on penalty-killing and on doing the little things to win."

A final round of cuts will eliminate five more players, getting the Olympic team down to twenty. Linstad feels sure that Looney will be in the final lineup-as long as she can stay healthy. Looney's all-out style of play makes her susceptible to injuries, according to Linstad. "She'll take one for the team. She'll sacrifice the body to make sure shots don't get through," she says.

Sobek, a member of the U.S. national teams since 1990, had been playing extremely well in late 1997 exhibition games, according to Linstad, "but for some reason didn't make the final mix." One of the stops on the national team's 1997 tour was a 9-0 drubbing of the current Husky squad. "A lot of people felt she was the player of the game then-but maybe it was because she was trying to show up her former teammates," Linstad laughs.

Although Looney was a star at Northeastern and player of the year in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference as a senior, she says she never expected to be playing hockey at such a high level. "College hockey was a part of my life, but not my whole life. Hockey gave me a chance to earn a scholarship and it was a way to both play and go to school," she says. "The Olympics seemed like a far goal, but it just seemed to fall into place for me."

Looney has been playing hockey most of her twenty-five years. She showed athletic ability early, skating eight miles in forty minutes at age six for a fund-raiser. In high school in Trenton, Michigan, she captained the softball, basketball, and volleyball teams and was offered a softball scholarship to attend the University of Detroit. She turned it down to take a partial hockey scholarship at Northeastern.

Sobek, also twenty-five, started skating as a child on the many outdoor rinks around Coon Rapids, Minnesota. When her father saw how interested she was in the hockey games that dominated the ice, he rushed out and bought her a stick. "Once I started playing hockey, I fell in love with it," Sobek says. "The pace of the game, how it always changes and allows you to be creative. You can be the player you want to be."

The player that female hockey players want to be, according to national and Olympic team coach Ben Smith, is both technically sound and intense. "They are very well coached and well trained," says Smith, himself the coach of the N.U. men's hockey team from 1991 to 1996. "But what separates these women from most men that I've coached is their passion for the game. When these kids were growing up, they didn't have the opportunities that men had. They had no scholarships, no Olympics, no pro contracts to shoot for. It makes it great for me to come to the rink every day with people who love the game so much."

Smith describes Looney and Sobek as extremely talented with different attributes. Looney is a "highly competitive, tenacious player-a whirling dervish on the ice." Sobek is more offensive-minded, "a slick puck-handler and a very opportunistic scorer," he says. According to Smith, they represent the best Northeastern has had to offer in the last five or six years.

"Heather [Linstad] has put together such a solid program at Northeastern," Smith says. "She's had so many great players over the years, like [goaltender] Kelly Dyer, but the timing unfortunately just wasn't right for them. The great thing about this opportunity is it gives us a chance to promote the sport and create enthusiasm for others to follow."

And what better way to promote the sport than by winning the first Olympic gold medal? The main obstacles in that quest will be Canada and Finland. The U.S. team opens in Nagano February 8 against China and will play six games in a round-robin format. The gold medal game is slated for February 17.

FOR GOALIE ROBITAILLE, THE PUCK STOPS HERE

By Paul Perillo

Late in the first period of Northeastern's hockey game at Merrimack College on November 7, an opposing player picked up a loose puck near center ice and skated in alone on goaltender Marc Robitaille, N.U.'s talented sophomore.

The player closed in and let loose a shot, but Robitaille easily kicked the puck into the corner, ending the threat. Northeastern went on to win the game, 6-4, behind a five-goal third-period explosion and forty-four saves by "Robi," as his teammates call him.

"Marc has been able to do that for us a lot," says second-year coach Bruce Crowder. "More so last year than so far this season, but he definitely has that kind of ability."

Scenes like Robitaille's heroics against Merrimack have become familiar for the Huskies. Upon coming to Huntington Avenue last season, he quickly became the starting goaltender. He single-handedly kept Northeastern in almost every contest last year, posting a 4.20 goals-against average and three shutouts while turning aside a school-record 1,027 shots.

Despite Robitaille's prowess, Northeastern went 8-25-3 last year, winning just three Hockey East games. But so far, the 199798 season has been different. While Crowder still relies heavily on his net-minder, the defensive corps around Robitaille has improved dramatically. N.U. held the league lead in mid-December, with an overall record of 8-5-2.

"Marc provides us with a stability factor back there," says Crowder. "We're trying to get more people in the fold, playing at the level and with the intensity that we want them. We've been able to clean things up better so far, and that takes some pressure off him."

Robitaille came to Northeastern after playing four years of junior hockey in his hometown of Gloucester, Ontario. Like most Canadian teens, Robitaille wants to play in the National Hockey League someday. At sixteen, he thought about trying out for an Ontario Hockey League team, a version of the minor leagues. "I had a long talk with my parents and we decided that I wasn't ready to live on my own, so I stuck with juniors," says Robitaille. "It was the best decision I ever made.

"After my fourth year of juniors, my only goal was to obtain a scholarship. Wherever you're playing, you always want to obtain the next level," he says. "Now that I'm playing college hockey, I obviously feel like I made the right choice."

Robitaille's parents, Jean and Barbara, have been able to watch the elder of their two sons play several times. One such occasion was last year's Beanpot Tournament, where Robitaille captured the Eberly Award, given to the goaltender with the best save percentage for the two games. They also were on hand for the Huskies' two-game swing through upstate New York early this season to play Colgate and Cornell Universities.

"My parents thought the Beanpot was the most incredible experience. My father had tears in his eyes when he saw me on the Jumbotron scoreboard. They really enjoy the college game," says Robitaille. "When they went to the Colgate and Cornell games"-places notorious for their rowdy crowds-"they really enjoyed the atmosphere. After the game, my mother asked me, 'How can you concentrate when [the fans] yell at you like that?' "

Husky fans are glad that Robitaille hasn't had any trouble doing so thus far.