PHOTO BY EDGAR ARTIGA
Haley Skarupa, pictured at the Rockville Ice Arena, came home from South Korea with an Olympic gold medal.
who was tight friends with the other players. With grace, she exited the selection camp outside Tampa and took a five-month break from hockey, her first since she started playing street hockey with her older brother and neighborhood boys at age 4. “It was devastating,” she says. “All I had dreamed about was the Olympics.” She was living then, as now, in Boston, where she plays for the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League following a stellar career at Boston College. In 2015-16, she helped the BC Eagles achieve a rare undefeated regular season, and went on to record 115 career goals, third highest in team history, and to become the second-highest-scoring
hockey player (for goals and assists) in school history among men or women. After being cut from Team USA, Skarupa walked dogs to stay busy and even thought about leaving hockey. But then she got the call. The Olympic team needed her to fill in for some injured players and help the team train. “I told them I hadn’t been on skates for five months,” Skarupa says. She had two days to decide whether to go. Her love of hockey and her teammates made it an easy call. “Everyone was super welcoming,” she says. “It was like I never left.” After several weeks, the injured players returned and she left camp. Later, she was called back again. “I just took it day by day,” she
recalls. “The highs and lows were like a roller coaster. It was so out of my control.” Just before Christmas, she found out she had made the team. “My mother cried. A lot,” says Skarupa, who credits the steadiness of her parents in making the ordeal bearable. Now back in Boston, Skarupa doesn’t know what her hockey future holds. She continues to train and remains on the Pride’s roster. But the team, like all women’s pro hockey teams, doesn’t pay a living wage, so Skarupa is facing some life choices. Still, the uncertainty of what lies ahead can’t dim the glow of achieving her lifelong dream. “I’m just trying to savor these moments,” she says. n
BETHESDAMAGAZINE.COM | JULY/AUGUST 2018
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