Meet Kelsey DiClaudio, maybe the very best feminine athlete you’ve by no means heard of.
The Western Pennsylvania resident is a competitor in sled hockey, a sport for Para athletes that incorporates a regulation rink and regulation objectives, however as an alternative of a single hockey persist with shoot the puck, the gamers use two cut-off sticks, every metallic enamel on the butt finish to make use of to propel them alongside the ice sheet.
About the one distinction between a sled hockey rink and one for ice hockey is that the bench space has a sheet of plexiglass in entrance of the bench in order that the gamers can observe the motion and know when to start out their subsequent shift. Too, the entry and exit to the ice is degree with the bench space entry, eliminating any steps of top distinction.
Apart from these variations, the sport is identical — gamers attempt to propel the puck right into a 4-by-6-foot aim guarded by a goaltender. The foundations on line modifications, icing and offside are the identical.
And so are highlight-reel performs, resembling those turned in by the U.S. girls’s sled staff in final week’s inaugural girls’s sled hockey world championship in Slovakia. DiClaudio, within the first interval, circled round from behind the online, batted the puck from left to proper beneath the sled, then, with a deft contact, lifted the puck together with her proper stick like a prepare dinner flipping a hamburger patty, then, with a flick of the wrist, put it excessive over the Canadian goalie’s head into the highest nook.
It was a play which has come to be often called a “Michigan,” so named for Mike Legg, a school participant who pulled off an analogous transfer in a sport about 35 years in the past.
However in sled hockey, the “Michigan” shot is nearly unfair as a result of goalkeepers within the sport are sometimes of very quick stature and can’t cowl the 4 ft of top effectively.
Then once more, the Workforce Canada goalie mustn’t have felt badly; no person else within the event may deal with the U.S. assault, both. The States gained gold on the inaugural World Championship, a contest which noticed themselves, Canada, Australia, Nice Britain, Norway, and a Remainder of the World staff.
As there have been solely 5 full nationwide groups there on the event, it falls wanting the variety of groups that would display viability for inclusion within the Paralympic program. However given the variety of international locations which have males’s sled hockey, it’s solely a matter of time.
