THE ICE GIRL

Each time someone told her no, that she couldn’t play hockey with their sons and she really had no business playing at all, Cammi Granato tightened her grip on her stick and her dream.

She knew what she wanted, even when she was 4 and her hopeful mother signed her up for figure skating classes and bought her a cute little skating dress.

“I didn’t want anything to do with it,” Granato said. “I actually didn’t stay on the ice during the lessons. I would leave and go watch hockey games.”

Her mother should have known. Natalie and Don Granato had gone to Chicago Blackhawk games on dates before they married, and later had season tickets.

And when Cammi’s three older brothers trooped over to skate on the frozen field near their house, Cammi naturally tagged along, gliding and tumbling with them on her double-runners during Chicago’s long, cold winters.

“The first five or six years I was playing, I had no idea I was unique,” said Granato, who had an autographed poster of Blackhawk center Denis Savard on her bedroom wall. “I had no idea people could say, ‘You’re not allowed to play. You can’t be a pro hockey player.’ I had the same aspirations as my brothers--I wanted to play for the Hawks.

“When I turned about 10 or 11 I couldn’t change in the locker rooms with the boys anymore and that bothered me. That was such a raw deal for me. And other kids’ parents would point fingers and whisper and tell their boys not to play with me. I didn’t have as much trouble with my own team and my own league because everybody accepted my family.

“My mom tells me I would be in the women’s bathroom changing and I’d say, ‘I hate this. Why is everybody pointing fingers? Why is everybody saying stuff?’ And when I’d go on the ice it would all go away.”

On the ice, the barbs stopped. She outhustled and outscored the other kids, taking the hardest hits without a whimper.

“She’d get bumped or bruised, or get a stick in the face, and she’d be right back in there,” said her oldest brother, Tony, a former King and a 1988 Olympian who plays for the San Jose Sharks. “It took me until I was 16 or 17 before I thought, ‘She’s doing something most other little sisters aren’t doing.’ ”

She still does it. Only now, the stakes are higher than neighborhood bragging rights.

Granato, 26, is the captain of the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team, which is a co-favorite with Canada to win the gold medal at Nagano in the first women’s Olympic hockey tournament. A member of the U.S. national women’s squad since its inception in 1990 and one of the best female hockey players in the world, this 5-foot-7, 140-pound center has been the face of women’s hockey to the few who follow it--a role she will again play on a global stage at Nagano.

“She has obviously been a terrific player and she is, at the risk of coming off wrong, a glamorous player,” said Dave Ogrean, executive director of USA Hockey, the sport’s governing body. “And in terms of promoting the game, that’s very important. To the world, the fact women’s hockey is being played is news. She hasn’t been put in the job of women’s hockey ambassador, but it’s a mantle she wears comfortably and carries successfully.”

Said Sandra Whyte, one of Granato’s frequent linemates the last two seasons, “She’s definitely a pioneer. She’s been fortunate enough to have media exposure and has used it well. She’s been a great spokesperson, not only a great hockey player. She wants to spread the word that women’s hockey is a great game and she’s just an incredible role model.”

Granato never saw herself as a trailblazer or crusader. If that motivated her, she could have accepted an invitation from the New York Islanders in 1996 to be the first female non-goaltender to attend an NHL training camp. After consulting Tony, she declined, fearing an injury might end her Olympic chances. She also dreaded becoming a spectacle. She never wanted that. She simply wants to play hockey.

“We’re just trying to make people understand that we’re not females trying to be athletes, we are female athletes,” she said. “We have a passion for something and we’re pursuing it. If you watched a women’s game and saw Team USA lace up their skates before a game, and see the passion and energy, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s hockey at its most fundamental state.”

It can also be dangerous, even though there’s no body checking and players must wear visors and full face masks.

When she was in her early teens and the only girl on the ice, other teams targeted her for abuse to drive her away. One vicious hit left her with a concussion and kept her out of the national bantam finals. Over the years, she has endured cuts and broken bones, and she has a chronically sore back. But she inherited the same resilience that helped Tony resume his NHL career after undergoing brain surgery almost two years ago.

“I had a tough time watching him play last year, but I don’t think injuries happen often enough to worry on an everyday basis. You can’t go through life worrying about everything,” Natalie Granato said. “You go driving down the street and you’re not worried if a car is going to come out and hit you. . . . I don’t let that get in the way or otherwise my kids wouldn’t have been playing as long as they have.”

Tony tried to protect Cammi when they were younger by picking her for his teams. He saw her talent--he says she still knows the game better than he does--but he thought she was headed for nothing but disappointment if she chose hockey as a career.

“I thought maybe I should tell her she shouldn’t play hockey anymore,” he said. “But that would have crushed her. I was afraid to tell her. I was kind of hoping she would fall in love with another sport and that would knock hockey down a notch [in her affections], but as soon as she’d get done with track or soccer, she’d go right back to hockey.”

She was good enough at soccer to consider playing at the University of Wisconsin as a walk-on, and she had offers to play Division II basketball. She also played team handball at two Olympic Festivals and was invited to train with the national team, which seemed her best shot at being an Olympian.

Even she wondered if she had gone as far as she could in hockey.

“It was sad, but I had to get away from the game for a couple of years, my junior and senior years of high school,” she said. “The next level of hockey was all hitting and I wasn’t into that part of the game, so I had to focus on other sports. In the back of my mind, I wanted to go to college and play hockey, but it was tough because I wasn’t recruited.”

Almost accidentally, the Granatos learned that a few Eastern colleges offered women’s hockey scholarships. Cammi was invited to a tournament in Massachusetts and impressed observers so much with her tenacity around the net and her ability to read the game that she got a scholarship to Providence College before the coach ever saw her play.

She led the Friars to two East Coast Athletic Conference championships and was named ECAC player of the year three times, all the while wondering what would come next. She wasn’t ready to retire after she graduated in 1993, and the U.S. national team--which didn’t hire a full-time coach until 1996--didn’t play often enough for her to stay sharp. Nor was there a women’s professional league to join.

“I knew at that point that women’s hockey was accepted in the Olympics and I had to decide, ‘Do I get out of college and go find a job, like everybody is supposed to do, or do I put all that on hold and make sacrifices so I can continue playing hockey?’ ” she said.

“I thought a lot about it. For my first semester I coached a junior boys’ team in Madison [Wis.] but I knew deep inside I had so much hockey left to play.”

To do that, she went to Concordia University in Montreal as a graduate student.

Although her savings dwindled because she couldn’t work, she elevated her game, playing more often and against better competition.

“That was the best decision I could have made, for a lot of reasons,” she said.

One is that she met her boyfriend there. She credits him with bringing balance to her life, but in truth, almost everything is secondary to preparing for Nagano.

“She has put off her life. I know she has,” Natalie Granato said. “I even told her, ‘If you want to get married and have a baby that’s OK with me. I’d be glad to help you with the baby.’ ”

Granato, one of six children, anticipates having a large family someday. She will have many stories to tell her kids--perhaps even about winning the first women’s gold medal in hockey. Canada has won all four women’s World Championships, but the U.S. prevailed over Canada and Finland to win the Three Nations Cup in December. The teams’ pre-Olympic series is tied, 6-6, with one game left tonight in Colorado Springs.

Yet, Granato knows there’s more to be gained at Nagano than a medal. There are acceptance and respect to be won, and a chance to be a role model not only for young girls, but for anyone who was ever discouraged from pursuing a dream.

“There are so many great stories about sacrifices and everything that goes into being an Olympian, and that’s what we’re about too,” Granato said.

“Hopefully, people will get that into their minds and take a positive attitude about women’s hockey and get rid of the negative stereotypes, the people who said, ‘You don’t belong out there. What are you trying to do? It’s a man’s game.’

“Limitations that other people set are unfair, like we weren’t allowed to succeed in certain areas.

“If I would have listened to all those people, I wouldn’t be here.”