JEFF JACOBS

U.S. hockey, curling golds may impact state of sports

Oops! I Did It Again.

The Miracurl on Ice.

One was a move for the ages. The other was a mighty blow struck for all of us who ever have been rejected.

The U.S. women’s hockey and men’s curling teams have combined for two of the most unforgettable moments in American Winter Olympic history.

And now we wonder: What impact can those two gold medals have at the grass-roots level in Connecticut?

As the women’s gold medal game morphed into a shootout Thursday, American fans could not help but fear the worst. Team USA had won seven of the past eight world championships, but arch-nemesis Canada had won four Olympic gold medals in a row.

That’s when Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson delivered one of the nastiest moves in the annals of hockey shootouts. She wound her way slowly, snakelike, toward Shannon Szabados. Suddenly, Lamoureux was roaring in on the Canadian goalie. She faked a forehand shot at the hashmarks, drew quickly to her backhand and quickly back to her forehand to stuff the puck past the diving Szabados.

The wondrous move, perfected at North Dakota, had a nickname.

Oops! I Did It Again. And it had to excite young girls across all 50 states, including ours, as much as Britney Spears’ song did in 2000. It also raises a question. Yes, Connecticut prep schools have long produced women’s hockey Olympians. Yes, Connecticut has a number of Division I programs. Yes, Stamford is home to one of the four pro teams of the NWHL and USA Hockey mercifully is paying the women enough, barely, to allow them to prolong a career.

Now what will it take for the CIAC, Connecticut’s governing body for high school sports, to add girls ice hockey?

Steve Emt watched the U.S. curling team’s remarkable story end Saturday with a 10-7 victory over Sweden. It quickly gained a clever nickname: The Miracurl on Ice. A bunch of guys, essentially unwanted by the U.S. Curling Association, rose up and beat the world powers for a gold medal.

“It’s a defining moment for our sport,” Emt said. “For these men to take on the world and beat up on the Canadas and Swedens, it’s amazing.”

Emt, former UConn basketball player, former basketball coach at RHAM High, is the vice-skip of the U.S. Paralympic curling team that will compete on the same South Korean surface in a few weeks. Emt, paralyzed in a 1995 truck accident, leaves for Pyeongchang on Monday. He knows some of the Olympians. He has been in contact with Matt Hamilton and skip John Shuster’s wife.

“They are fantastic guys who

showed all sorts of guts, especially John Shuster,” Emt said.

With the score tied 5-5 against the Swedes in the eighth end, Shuster threaded a double-take out that netted a whopping five points. “Game. Done. Remarkable,” Emt said.

After finishing last in Vancouver in 2010 and next to last in Sochi in 2014, Shuster was a social media punching bag. Yet after a 2-4 start in South Korea, he is an Olympic hero, a curling legend.

“John had been beaten up so badly the last eight years,” Emt said. “U.S. Curling had made the decision to go younger with a High Performance program. John Shuster and his team weren’t even invited.

“They called those guys misfits and rebels and rejects; they were counted out. They had to work their tails off, move up the ranks, beat everybody (Shuster insisted his team remain together for the Olympics) and win the gold. I just love it. Unbelievable story.”

Can that magic spill over in Connecticut?

“It’s really up to the public,” Emt said. “Every four years we get a spike in interest and it wanes a little, so it’s difficult to tell. We only have two dedicated curling clubs in the state, one in Norfolk, one in Bridgeport (Nutmeg Curling Club). It is a fantastic sport. I played baseball, basketball, soccer, all the sports growing up, and curling is incredible.

“If you work your tail off, you can represent your country. I’m living proof. It’s also something great to do in a freezing New England winter a couple of times a week. It’s a terrific social sport. It’s a fraternity, a sorority. There’s a ‘paper club’ in Hartford, but they play on arena ice and it’s completely different. If a couple more dedicated clubs could pop up in the state, if a couple of investors became involved, it would absolutely help our cause. I’m going to promote curling every way I can.”

There is no better promoter for getting girls hockey in to the CIAC than Al Carbone, the progressive commissioner of the Southern Connecticut Conference. The FCIAC and the SCC, which takes in teams from outside the conference and has two divisions, sponsor the sport in Connecticut.

“Those of us on the state championship committee are pushing hard for it get into the CIAC,” Carbone said. “My feeling is we are still a few years away. There has been a lot of conversation. We’ve seen great growth at the high school level and my data is girls youth hockey is booming. We now have 56 schools with at least one player on the 23 total teams. They’re all CIAC schools? Why not oversee it?

“Instead of a handful of schools for a co-op team, why not work hard toward two-school coops and expand the number of teams? Instead of saying there aren’t enough teams, the question should be how can we make this work and promote it the best way? The biggest obstacle is schools’ resistance to start a stand-alone program.”

You may remember in 2015 a state championship overtime game between Simsbury and East Catholic/Glastonbury/South Windsor was declared a tie at Terry Conners Rink in Stamford so a boys FCIAC title game could be played. It was a logistical blunder that received some national attention.

“It was wrong and never should have happened, horrible,” Carbone said. “But wait a second. Girls ice hockey is a really good sport, with a lot of interest, why don’t you think about that, too? I think the attention was good in some ways.

“All I hear is how important it is to play high school sports. It creates memories, teamwork, all those great things. There is great commitment from parents for ice hockey, they’re all over New England for tournaments. Why not get the girls into their high school, playing in the CIAC, so they can maybe play lacrosse, softball or field hockey, too? It should be a no-brainer.”

Maybe that Oops! I Did It Again in Korea can help make sure there’s not an “Oops, we did it again” at Terry Conners Rink.