Go, Shannon Szabados, Go!

 As a hockey player, and as a female hockey player, you just want to be seen as a hockey player and as a goalie.

Shannon Szabados, after training with the Oilers (Oilers TV)

Shannon Szabados, gold medal goalie in Canada's women's team, is apparently about to play in the Southern Professional Hockey League for the Columbus Cottonmouths (gotta love the names of some hockey teams!).  She'll be the first woman to have played in the league if she does.  Just like she was the first woman to play in the Western Hockey League (for a game with the Tricity Americans).  For those that don't know, these are big leagues.  She trained with the Edmonton Oilers this week.  She is breaking through!  One has to applaud the fact that Shannon is able to play in leagues that feed into the very top layers of the ice hockey world.  It can't be easy.  Applause for her too!  Go Shannon!

Info from NHL website.

My appreciation continues to grow of the fact that, in the world of hockey, women and men are able to meet in legitimate competition where there are no unwritten rules or affirmative actions (except, perhaps, the 'don't hit sheilas' rule).  There aren't many sports that allow this in any except for a novelty event.  In hockey it's skill and, to a less extreme degree, size that sets the benchmarks.  It's part of what I've call 'the democracy of the ice,' where age, ethnicity and gender are all secondary characteristics of one's fellow skaters, all ranking behind their ability to skate.  This is as it should be.

Less so with inline than ice, but that comes down perhaps to the intrinsic social and structural differences between these two forms of the art.