No longer just a boy's game

Posted: Sun February 15, 1998 at 12:30 AM ET

Brown-Miller (left) celebrates after scoring a goal against rival Canada in Saturday's game   AP

By Jim Kelley, CNN/SI

NAGANO, Japan (CNN/SI) -- Lisa Brown, who just one day earlier had become Lisa Brown-Miller, was preparing to leave on her honeymoon when the letter arrived in her mailbox.

It was an invitation to join the first ever U.S. Women's Olympic Hockey Team training camp and it changed everything.

"I did the math real quick,'' said Brown-Miller. "At first I thought 'Oh, I'm going to be 31, what's the point.' At first I didn't even think about being here.''

Here is Nagano, site of the first women's Olympic hockey medal competition ever. And even at 31, with thoughts of a husband, a house and someday children and even a dog, Brown-Miller couldn't let go of her dream.

Nor would her new husband let her.

"It was actually John,'' she said of the final push to Nagano. "He said you're absolutely crazy [if you don't go]. I don't want you sitting around on the coach and watching this on TV. I don't want you to regret not giving it a shot.''

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Once he said the honeymoon could wait, he didn't have to say it twice.

Outside of hockey circles, people are still surprised when women skaters show up with sticks and pads instead of sequins and short skirts. But the game has a history even if it doesn't include Peggy Flemming. Like a lot of kids who grew up playing the gam e, Brown-Miller started playing in the streets of her home town, Union Lake, Michigan, when she was 7 years old. By the time she was ready for college, college was ready for women's hockey. She scored 154 points in 90 games at Princeton University. She was the coach there now and won the women's Ivy-League championship in 1992, but she never stopped playing the game.

Little wonder when an opportunity to live the Olympic dream came along they didn't have to ask her twice.

An Olympic medal, of any color, would be the best ending possible for Brown-Miller, but it would be just the beginning for her sport.

Acceptance of the women's game is on the rise and CBS has booked substantial blocks of time for the game. That might be more for the opportunity to do warm and fuzzy features that pull in female viewers in record numbers for Olympic competitions. But the athletes don't seem to mind. They're hoping the exposure gives their game the same push women's basketball and softball got after the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

There already have been some commercial opportunities, including corporate sponsors and even some talk of a minor pro league in the New England area. Cammi Granato, brother of San Jose Sharks forward Tony Granato, has even flirted with the idea of accepti ng a training camp tryout offer from Mike Milbury, the general manager of the New York Islanders.

If it all sounds like it's moving fast, well, so is the game. The sport is played all over the world and has hosted it's own World Championship for years. The powers in the game are Canada (winner of the last four World Championships) and the United State s. But Finland, China, Sweden and Japan all play at an extremely high level and other countries are catching up. The game is popular because it takes most of the best elements of the men's game, skating, passing, shooting and scoring, and eliminates many of the things that are dragging the men's game down.

There is no body checking in women's hockey. Purists argue that it therefore is not hockey. But eliminating the body checking has not made it a lesser game, only different. No body checking has led to the elimination of much of the boring defensive stra tegies that have created the close-checking, mind-numbing games so common in the men's game today. Women skaters fly up and down the ice. The skating is excellent and the passing is very sharp. Plays are run without as much interference, thereby imparting a better flow and pace.

Still, the game does have a physical side. It's not unusual to see a well-placed stick in the side, or an elbow in the face when opponents go into the corner looking for a puck. When the U.S. plays Canada, tension runs especially high. Fighting is not com mon (and not allowed in the Olympics), but in some exhibition games leading up to this tournament, there have been occasions when the gloves have come off and the competitors were not admiring each other's nails.

If there's a soft side to the game it comes in the area of shot velocity. It's not uncommon for drives from the blueline to sometimes flutter toward the net. It tends to make the goalies look better than they are. One odd quirk, despite the gender change, women who play the blueline are still called defensemen.

But Brown-Miller doesn't worry about things like that. A pioneer in the sport, she's finally realized a dream, one that has opened doors for her and maybe for the Brown-Miller's to come.

"The time is coming when David and I will settle down and get on with things,'' she said. "It would be nice some winter night to pull a medal out of a box and show it to my kids. Maybe they would want to try and win one, too.''

The best part is it won't be just her sons who get that chance.