Teeter Stands Tall as U.S. Women Win Gold

Not everybody looks good in a red, white and blue Uncle Sam hat. Teeter does.

She makes an entrance carrying a bouquet of flowers and modeling a floppy-topped hat made of foam, bestowed by an older brother. They go beautifully with her Olympic gold medal. There she is, Ms. America.

Coming soon to a Wheaties box near you, Sarah Tueting.

“Teeting,” is how you pronounce it. Teeter to her friends. A cello-playing Dartmouth student who wants to be a doctor, like her mother, Teeter was 6 when she went out on Halloween in her hometown of Winnetka, Ill., dressed as a hockey goalie. She is 21 now and the goalie who won America the gold after a 3-1 victory over Canada in the inaugural Olympic women’s hockey tournament.

In 1980, it was a goaltender, Jim Craig, who unforgettably draped himself in a flag after a “miracle” gold medal at Lake Placid, N.Y.

Now, with an effort every bit as inspired, American women who were schoolgirls or even in their cribs in 1980 have come through in an arena here known as Big Hat.

And now, a big hat is what their goalie is wearing.

‘USA! USA! USA!” sing the winners of ice hockey’s first Winter Olympics for women, to the tune of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Teeter stands in the middle, singing the loudest.

“USA! USA! USA-A-AY!”

*

A little more than 24 hours before Tuesday’s game, Teeter and her teammate, Sara DeCosta, 20, of Warwick, R.I., did not know which of them would start in goal.

“The two Sarahs,” some of the players call them.

Ben Smith, the man who coaches the women, took the goaltenders aside after practice and broke the news. He would go with Tueting.

It was a hunch. The two usually trade off, one in the nets one night, the other the next. Technically, it was DeCosta’s turn.

They each knew Canada’s every move. The teams had met 14 times. They had met in Bathurst, New Brunswick, and in Kitchener, Ontario. They had met in Minneapolis and in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and in Burlington, Vt.

Either goalie could go. They were interchangeable.

But this was the biggest game in women’s hockey history.

The coach couldn’t explain his choice, other than to say, “In all honesty, I thought if something were to go wrong, go awry, or if somebody got hurt, anything, I felt Sara DeCosta would be better coming out of the bullpen.

“I told her, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m doing what’s best for the team, not what’s best for you.’ ”

How did she take it?

“She took it like . . . “

A man? That is how an obsolete phrase goes.

Smith knows better.

“Like the great athlete she is,” he says.

*

On the night before the game, Teeter did her best to relax.

She couldn’t. She was in bed by 8:30, but tossed and turned.

“A lot of nervous energy,” she describes it. “A lot.”

Her roommates, Gretchen Ulion and Sandra Whyte, couldn’t take her for much longer. Teeter was on the brink. She was throwing apples at the walls. She was bouncing on the bed. She was up, she was down.

“My roommates were, like, ‘Omigod! Get a-WAY from us!’ ”

Around 10:30, Teeter dozed off.

She doubts she woke up any more than a dozen times, max.

*

On the morning of the game, the whole team did its best to relax.

DeCosta came up to Tueting at breakfast.

“How you feeling?” she asked. “You ready to go?”

A sports psychologist had given the team tips on relaxation. That helped. And there were ways of visualizing a goal. Karyn Bye, 26, a veteran U.S. player from River Falls, Wis., enjoyed looking at a color photograph of a Lillehammer, Norway, gold-medal presentation from the last Winter Olympics that the psychologist gave to her. She taped this photo to a bathroom wall in Nagano so the players could look at it every day.

Their game with Canada would begin at 6 p.m., Japan time.

All day, most of the U.S. players knew they would get to play. But one of their goalies would have to watch from the bench.

Bye understands how difficult the coach’s decision was, and how disappointed Sara DeCosta had to be. She says, “We have the two best goalies I have ever played with. He could have put either of the Sarahs out there. We would have been all right.”

DeCosta could have been upset.

But the other Sarah--Teeter--said, “She realizes there’s a bigger picture.”

*

In the hour before the game, the team tried just about everything.

Music. Meditation. Conversation. Inspiration. A coach even put on a video of the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight.

Teeter began her ritual.

First, she put on one of her brother’s old T-shirts. It has been a habit of hers before every big game. Jonathan is 24 and a University of Chicago medical student. Their mother is a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois, specializing in schizophrenia. Teeter has been known to assist with her experiments.

When the goalie put on her skates, the right one had to go on first. Some things, you just gotta do, for luck.

DeCosta came up to Tueting.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said.

It was a pin DeCosta always wore on her shoulder, a guardian angel.

Tueting said, “I can’t wear your pin!”

“No, you wear it tonight. For luck.”

*

In the game itself, the goalie seemed inspired.

She made 21 saves. For two periods, Teeter stopped every Canada shot. Stick saves. Pad saves. Glove saves. The only puck that got past her was one in the third period, when Team USA had a player in the penalty box.

By then, Teeter’s team was ahead, 2-0. Gretchen Ulion had gotten the U.S. on the scoreboard first. And then Shelley Looney scored, midway through the final period.

All Teeter had to do was hang on.

But that’s when Canada scored. And time seemed to stand still. At the net, the goalie began going nuts.

“I’d look up at the clock. Then there’d be a play. Then I’d look up again, and only one second would be gone. I’d yell, ‘Who’s messing with the clock?!’ ”

In hockey, the clock ticks off toward the 20-minute mark, not down from it.

“I’d see 16:50,” Tueting says. “And then 15:50. I’d say, ‘They took a minute away!’

“Talk about paranoia!”

*

Ten minutes left. Five. Two.

“The last two minutes were ridiculous,” Teeter says.

She turned away everything Canada threw at her.

DeCosta says, “She made big saves, key saves, unbelievable saves. She was hot. Once you get into that zone, you can do anything. She was in the zone.”

With 54 seconds to go, Canada pulled its goalie, Manon Rheaume. Six skaters to America’s five, bearing down on Teeter.

And, suddenly, victory.

Teeter’s roomie, Whyte, found the puck on her stick and a net open in front of her. With eight seconds to go, she shot home the gold-clincher.

The celebration soon began. Sticks were tossed like spears. Flags were worn like capes. It looked just like the American men’s celebration in 1980, when Craig, the goalie, wrapped himself in the Stars and Stripes forever.

Those goalies, so cool under fire, so poised, so. . . .

“Did you see me jumping around?” Teeter asks. “I couldn’t handle it!”

*

A couple years ago, in Walpole, Mass., the team had a practice. Teeter was tired when it ended.

“Coach said he had somebody he wanted to introduce. I didn’t catch his entire name.

“He said, ‘So, you’re a goalie, huh?’

“I said, ‘Yeah? So?’

“He said, ‘So, show me a move.’

“I did a butterfly for him.

“He said, ‘Oh, you’re a flopper!’ ”

Goalie talk.

“I gave him a lot of attitude after that,” Teeter says.

“Outside, coach caught up to me. He said, ‘You ever hear the name Jim Craig? Gold medal? 1980?’

“I said, ‘Uh, I think so.’

“ ‘That was him.’ ”

Ever since, Craig has been a loyal supporter of the women’s team and Teeter has never heard the end of it.

She says, “Don’t look at me. I was 4 in 1980.”

*

In the hours after the game, the team kept singing that “USA” song.

Teeter was the only one in an Uncle Sam hat.

She wore something else with it.

“Here’s your pin back,” she said to Sara DeCosta.

“No, it’s yours now,” said her teammate.