Ashley Hoffman is a little bit of an odd one out within the USA ladies’s hockey workforce crammed with part-time gamers and school college students which have booked their 2024 Paris Olympics tickets right here. Not solely has the American co-captain performed skilled membership hockey within the Netherlands, area hockey additionally runs in her household again dwelling within the US the place the ice model of the game is extra common.
PREMIUM Ashley Hoffman of the U.S. in motion(REUTERS)
Her mom, Brenda Hoffman, was a part of the ladies’s hockey workforce that gained bronze on the dwelling 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, which stays USA’s solely Olympic medal in ladies’s hockey. Forty years on, her daughter will observe her path and switch as much as an Olympics. Having made her senior worldwide debut in 2017, Ashley missed out on the Tokyo Games after USA misplaced a dramatic two-legged qualifying tie to India in India in 2019.
“It’s a dream to follow her (Brenda’s) footsteps,” Ashley, 27, told HT in a chat after scoring USA’s opening goal in their semi-final win over Japan at the FIH Women’s Hockey Olympic Qualifiers that sealed their Paris spot.
“I’ve had a hockey stick in my hand for a long time. But she never once pressured me into the sport, and that’s something I’m really grateful for.”
Brenda went from taking part in hockey to teaching junior gamers in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, earlier than Ashley was even born. The prod to get into the game by no means got here from her mom, however a younger Ashley picked it up anyway rising up in a hockey surroundings and listening to about her mom’s Olympic tales. Brenda started teaching her daughter in second grade, and continued to take action even when Ashley switched to a different highschool.
Dinner desk dialog centred round hockey was widespread within the Hoffman family. “There’s definitely a lot of hockey chat between us. It’s great fun. She will always give me her two cents after the game. And I appreciate that,” Ashley said.
Ashley was a regular in the University of North Carolina’s hockey roster, and earned her first junior USA call-up in 2012 before her senior debut five years later. All along, she never once felt the pressure of walking into and living up to her mother’s celebrated path in the sport.
“I didn’t feel too much pressure from my parents, especially my mom. Because I love the game, and it is such a fast-paced and dynamic sport that I just enjoy playing hockey. So, there was and is never any pressure to achieve anything. I just want to see what I can do, and she (Brenda) supports me fully in that,” said Ashley.
Part-time, college-going players
Ashley played club hockey in Europe (for Dutch club hdm) for three years before joining USA’s centralised national program under head coach David Passmore. The rest of the team comprises part-time players and girls from different universities who paused their school and took the semester off to get their and USA’s hockey back on the Olympics track. They did so defying expectations and rankings in Ranchi, topping Pool B — it included higher-ranked India and New Zealand — while winning all their three matches without conceding a goal.
“Some players are now a little bit behind in their school work,” Ashley said, smiling. “But we all had a dream since we were little, and that is to play at the Olympics. We are so excited to be a part of this group.”
That group comprised simply 9 gamers (six outfield and three goalkeepers) round 15 months in the past when Passmore took over the job. By May final yr, he put collectively a bunch of 24 and acquired a training workers that features assistant coach Javier Telechea, an Argentine with a “soccer background”, as Passmore places it, who works on their tactical and defensive constructions.
“It’s quite a small player base in the US and an odd structure. About 80% of the players come from just one pocket: Pennsylvania,” Passmore said. “The drive for hockey players there is only scholarship in universities. But that doesn’t prepare them for international hockey.”
Almost each participant within the present squad additionally works part-time. “We usually train in the mornings, and then they all go to their jobs in the afternoons,” the coach said.
‘Shoot for the stars in Paris’
USA had a below-par fourth-place finish at last year’s Pan Am Games, but it would only act as a springboard to their rousing run in Ranchi that has confirmed their destination Olympics after eight long years.
“It’s means so much to us, especially those who were in India five years ago and didn’t qualify,” Ashley said. “We have LA (Olympics) in 2028 (for which they will automatically qualify as hosts), but it feels so good to have earned a spot in the Olympics. We can now for the rest of our lives say that.”
The Americans will keep again in India and take a break in Goa earlier than heading off to Bhubaneswar for his or her Pro League matches subsequent month. The absence of knowledgeable league within the US means will probably be crucial for the workforce to maintain taking part in worldwide matches main as much as the Olympics, reckons Ashley, the place she is raring to depart a mark.
“From where we came a year ago, I recognise that medalling in Paris would be completely off the table,” Ashley said. “But now, we’re going to shoot for the stars.”
Source: www.hindustantimes.com
