From diamond, to rink, to the course for this hockey champion
Two-time Olympic gold medallist picks up her golf clubs and reminisces about the Blue Jays
Cheryl Pounder still remembers the energy when Joe Carter’s decisive home run won the Blue Jays the 1993 World Series.
“It was the excitement in the streets,” says the two-time Olympic gold medallist for women’s hockey (in 2002 and 2006). “I had grown up playing baseball and my family used to take vacations down to Florida and Dunedin for spring training.”
Pounder, 38, is like many Canadians of a similar age. She grew up as the Blue Jays did, with the team coming of age as she was discovering her own mojo in the athletic arena. She developed enough skill on the baseball diamond that at one point she was trying to decide whether to accept an American college scholarship in the sport.
She chose to stay in her hometown of Mississauga instead, eventually attending Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. where she not only honed her hockey skills but earned a kinesiology degree and three league all-star awards.
Women’s hockey was making inroads into the national sports consciousness in the late-’90s, roughly the same time Pounder was breaking into the national team.
“I remember watching in 1998 in Nagano,” she says of the Olympic Games that year, where Canada lost to the U.S. in the final.
“I turned to my grandmother (Dora Wimmer), who was my mentor,” she recalls, “and said ‘I’m going to do that, Gram, play for Canada in Salt Lake.’”
That Pounder eventually played in the Olympics was not a surprise — she had already donned the Maple Leaf winning gold at the 1994 World Championships. But she never imagined that her team’s 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic gold-medal win would cause such a frenzy.
“I don’t remember a shift of the actual game,” says Pounder of the 3-2 Canadian win against the U.S., often cited as the most exciting women’s hockey game played.
Canada overcame eight consecutive penalties called against them to beat a team they hadn’t been defeated all season.
“I think if there was one moment when the sport really took off for women it was after Salt Lake,” she says. “It had been such a difficult year and I think people really related to us as underdogs.”
Following another Olympic gold medal in 2006, Pounder retired; capping off a career that also included five world championship titles and a tournament all-star honour in 2005. She now spends her professional life as a broadcaster, motivational speaker and coach at her hockey school.
She is also the mother to two girls, 7 and 5, who, you guessed it, have fallen in love with the game.
Her eldest daughter, Jamie, once participated in Leafs pre-game festivities at the Air Canada Centre.
“She didn’t realize that the Leafs were boys,” says Pounder, still laughing at the memory. “She just thought hockey was played by girls.
“I was like, ‘OK, if my own daughter didn’t realize that men play in the NHL, that says we are making progress.’ ”
Since retiring more than a decade ago, Pounder has watched the game evolve in other ways. She marvels at the speed and skill that elite women are now demonstrating and is generally happy with the progress the sport has made in gender accessibility.
Does Pounder still lace them up? Aside from the week at her annual hockey school, she’s resisted the urge. Not that she doesn’t miss it or lack for opportunity.
“The guys on my husband’s beer league team try to get me out,” she laughs, “so far, I’ve said ‘no thanks.’
“Not yet, anyway.”