Athletes learn they’ve failed to make an Olympic team in many ways, but for U.S. women’s hockey players, it has been especially heartbreaking in recent cycles.
Hilary Knight says her family still has her rejection letter from before the 2006 Torino Winter Games.
For Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014, players trying out for the national team gathered in a room and listened as the U.S. head coach read off the names of those who made it.
Alex Rigsby remembers sitting in that room in Lake Placid, N.Y., in June 2013.
Rigsby, then a University of Wisconsin rising senior, was one of four goaltenders trying out for three spots on the national team, along with the three veteran 2010 Olympic goalies — Brianne McLaughlin, Molly Schaus and Jessie Vetter.