Olympic hockey dreams on hold for two locals after the cancellation of the 2022 U18 Women’s World Championship

The U.S. women’s Olympic team won gold at the 2018 Winter Games in dramatic fashion — a 3-2 shootout victory over rival Canada. Then-13-year-old Wynnewood native Gracie Dwyer, who plays club hockey for the Jr. Flyers, followed the tournament closely and watched the highlights on repeat in the days that followed.

“I do remember watching and saying to my family, ‘I want to do that someday,’” said Dwyer, now 17 and committed to Cornell University.

Last October, Dwyer took a major step toward potentially realizing her Olympic dream, as she was selected by USA Hockey to compete at the 2022 IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship. Dwyer and Jr. Flyers teammate Laney Potter, a Pittsburgh native committed to the University of Wisconsin, were set to play for the U.S. in Linköping and Mjölby, Sweden, from Jan. 8-15.

» READ MORE: The U.S. women beat Finland in Olympic hockey, set up gold-medal showdown with Canada

For girls, the U18 Worlds serve as the first major opportunity to represent their country against the best in their age group internationally. It’s also the only junior international tournament in women’s hockey hosted by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). The men’s game also has an under-20 tournament, better known as the World Juniors.

However, for the second year in a row, the U18 Women’s World Championship was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the men’s World Juniors were slated to go on as planned in Canada despite being scheduled to wrap up just a few days before the start of the U18 Women’s World Championship.

Ultimately, the IIHF called off the World Juniors just a few days into competition on Dec. 29 due to high number of positive COVID-19 tests. Earlier this month, IIHF president Luc Tardif said the World Juniors will “most likely” be rescheduled for August.

But for Potter, Dwyer, and several 2004 birth-year teammates, the opportunity — potentially their only one — to compete at the highest level internationally remains uncertain.

“There’s not much more after this,” Potter said. “There’s the national team, Olympic team. But you eventually age out and I’m already 17. Realistically, I don’t have that much longer.”

In January 2008, the U18 Women’s World Championship debuted in Calgary. Sasha Sherry, of Lehighton, Pa., won gold with the U.S. team, marking the beginning of a dynasty in which the country has won eight of 13 tournaments.

Sherry, 31, participated in plenty of USA Hockey summer camps throughout her teenage years, but she had never competed in a tournament against such high-end international talent.

“It was really nice to have something at that age range, because most of us had been in the camps over the summers,” she said. “And we kind of see the same people, the same kind of top group of skaters would be pretty much regulars.

“But to be able to have a tryout for that and get selected to represent your country, there’s no greater honor to me just in sports.”

Fourteen years after that gold-medal game against Canada, Sherry vividly remembers skating under the bright lights of the Father David Bauer Olympic Arena alongside her U.S. teammates in front of more than 2,000 fans.

At that point in her career, it was the most high-pressure environment Sherry had ever experienced.

“The boys’ game and the men’s game has a higher fan base, it has a higher following,” Sherry said. “So for us as girls and women to play in front of a bigger crowd and to have people think that we were a big deal, because we are, that was awesome.”

» READ MORE: Remainder of World Juniors cancelled after rise in positive COVID cases

Like Sherry, Phoenixville native and Ohio State defenseman Hadley Hartmetz found that “nothing has come close” to the intensity of the U18 Women’s World Championship, especially in the U.S. team’s semifinal shootout victory over Canada in 2018. Hartmetz, 20, who competed in both the 2018 and 2019 championships, relayed her experiences with younger girls coming up through USA Hockey, including Dwyer.

“I just remember wanting to do something like what she was doing,” Dwyer said. “I wanted to be on that team.”

In October, Dwyer and Potter learned they made the team from USA Hockey general manager of the U18 team Kristen Wright and head coach Katie Lachapelle.

“I was trying not to be too excited on the phone call,” Potter said. “But it was definitely a super cool feeling, I guess you could say, and one that I’ve never had before. And I’ll definitely cherish that forever.”

Leading up to the tournament, Dwyer and Potter continued to play for the Girls 19U Tier-1 Jr. Flyers, ranked No. 2 in the country. Wright and USA Hockey emphasized the importance of buying into the team’s success by undergoing COVID-19 mitigation measures.

“I was pretty much just going to my workout place and the rink and my house,” Dwyer said. “I wasn’t really going anywhere else. And it was during the holidays. We weren’t really going to see our families, either, just to limit the exposure. So it was very stressful, but also it was for the goal of winning gold. So it was worth it.”

On Dec. 23 around 2 p.m., members of the U18 team received an email with login information for an urgent Zoom call an hour later. Dwyer figured the meeting had to do with travel or with the tournament getting postponed to the spring due to the surging omicron variant.

“Nothing through my head thought it was going to be totally canceled,” Dwyer said.

Wright delivered the news that the IIHF had canceled six of its championships that were slated to begin in January 2022, including the U18 Women’s World Championship. On Dec. 24, the IIHF made it official.

“I would say everybody just kind of had a blank face,” Potter said. “Some people were trying to hide emotions. And I can definitely speak for myself, I was trying to hide my emotions. But right when that Zoom call ended, tears came, for sure.”

The tournament’s cancellation sparked an outcry on social media from prominent figures in the hockey world, from five-time Canadian Olympian Jayna Hefford to four-time U.S. Olympian Hilary Knight.

Their concerns centered on the automatic cancellation of the tournament instead of an attempt to postpone it. At the time that the U18 Women’s World Championship were canceled, the World Juniors, which began on Dec. 26, were scheduled to go on as planned through Jan. 5. Last year, the women’s tournament was also canceled while the World Juniors were hosted in a bubble in Edmonton.

“Definitely very sad, I guess you could say,” Potter said of the effort disparity between holding the men’s and women’s tournaments. “But also, we weren’t surprised. I would say just kind of, like, oh, that’s what happens. Like, here we go again, kind of deal.”

In a statement to The Inquirer, the IIHF said that now “discussions are ongoing to reschedule all cancelled events including World Juniors, Women’s U18s and several other events that were initially planned to take place in January 2022.” Those discussions will resume following the conclusion of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

On Wednesday, Youth Hockey Hub reported that the tournament will be rescheduled for late June 2022 in the U.S. with an official announcement coming after the Olympics. Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek confirmed that he was told the same.

“We’re optimistic that hopefully the tournament will be rescheduled,” Dwyer said. “We don’t know. There was a lot of social media backlash on the IIHF. And so we hope that they recognize how we feel and that they can work to get it rescheduled for this year, because this is the last year that the ‘04 birth year can play.”

While the social media response from the public died down, both Potter and Dwyer thought often about where they were supposed to be on the would-be dates of the tournament and the gold-medal game. They’re both hopeful that the tournament gets rescheduled for the overall growth of the women’s game.

“Especially in the areas that not many players come from, even like the Philly area, there’s not as many players [as there are] in Minnesota,” Dwyer said. “So just kind of keep growing the game. Girls can see that either me or Laney or whatever on the team. And then they can think to themselves that they can do that, too.”

As they watched the U.S. women’s Olympic team win gold in 2018, Dwyer and Potter envisioned themselves doing the same one day. On Wednesday night, another generation of girls will do the same after watching the U.S. and Canada compete in the women’s gold-medal game in Beijing. Those dreams will feel a lot closer to reality if more under-18 girls get the opportunity to compete on the international stage.

“It shows these young girls that they got this, they got the national team, the Olympics,” Potter said. “So it’s like almost one more step to get there. And a lot of people want to get there.”