Hockey By The Book

Who writes books these days?

Novelists, for one. Poets and playwrights and politicians. Historians and scientists and self-help gurus. Celebrity confidantes and women’s hockey players.

Wait. Women’s hockey players?

That’s right. Even lady skaters are getting into the publishing game. Over the course of several months this past spring, Harvard legend and soon-to-be three-time U.S. Olympian Angela Ruggiero ’02-’04 traded in her skates for a pen and scribed Breaking the Ice: My Journey to Olympic Hockey, the Ivy League, and Beyond, already on bookshelves.

The finished product is a heartfelt autobiography, an earnest account of how Ruggiero, through her gifts on the rink, overcame a difficult childhood and transcended expectations on the way to international fame and success.

Her writing blends the personal (“the idea of being naked in front of a group made me uncomfortable”) and the philosophical (“increasingly I wanted to live a life light on possessions and big on experiences”) in equal measure, toeing the line between tell-all and rumination.

As Ruggiero progresses in her story, which takes her from a gritty upbringing in Southern California to prestigious schools in the east, to Olympiads in Nagano and Salt Lake City, and on to a role as humanitarian and ambassador of her sport around the world, she is careful to show how she has matured as both a player and a person.

“I’ve seen sports and hockey as a means,” Ruggiero says. “They’ve enabled me to get where I am.”

And who else better to testify to Ruggiero’s growth than Harvard coach Katey Stone, who mentored her over a six-year span from 1998 to 2004?

“She’s one of the best players we ever had, a great kid,” Stone says. “It was always awesome each year to see her get better and better and I think she’s still developing as a player. But Angela’s done a lot of things that are so separate from hockey that give her balance.”

Directed at a teenage audience, girls growing up playing hockey that Ruggiero aims to inspire to pursue their ambitions, the prose at times comes off as silly or childish, but it is stilted in the name of getting through to the younger generation of female Olympic hopefuls.

“I see young girls with aspirations to play in the Olympics or to get scholarships to great universities,” Ruggiero says. “In my journey growing up I didn’t have any role models.”

The implication in this is that Ruggiero is trying to be that role model for American girl skaters. Publishing the book is a step in that direction, and her former coach thinks she is succeeding.

“She’s a dominant force, arguably the best defenseman in the world,” Stone says. “But I think it’s great that she’s written this book. It kind of points to the fact that she’s much more than a hockey player. She did tell her story and hopefully it will inspire some kids.”

Ruggiero’s Olympic experiences, which forced her to take a two-year training hiatus in the middle of her Harvard playing days, give her a special kind of insight into the struggles awaiting this year's Crimson edition.

“You see Chu and Cahow leave and it will affect the team to have two great players not on the roster,” Ruggiero says. “But they will come back faster and stronger. And to have the Harvard name out there in the Olympic year helps in the recruiting process. It’s going to be a growing year, so the younger players will get more ice time. I just feel bad for the seniors.”

In many ways, Ruggiero notes, her ascendance in the global game of women’s hockey has coincided with the increasing prominence of the sport in general.

“I’ve grown up simultaneously with the sport,” she says. “I really came in at the right moment.”

So what will the coming years, with the Winter Olympics in Turin in February, and then the entire future of women’s hockey to consider, bring?

“A lot depends on whether we win the gold medal or not,” Ruggiero says. “When we won in 1998, it revitalized the sport in the U.S. with the NCAA and everything. Then, after Canada won in 2002, the sport blossomed there.”

“I love what I’m doing,” she adds. “It’s really exciting. I’m a full-time athlete and a nap is part of my daily routine. 2010 is definitely on my horizon but I’m taking it one year at a time.”

Does anyone else smell a sequel?

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.