Elizabeth Brown-Miller

Hockey

Elizabeth Brown-Miller smiles a little and looks around her. She sees some of her U.S. Olympic women’s hockey teammates, the 18- and 19-year-old ones who are accepting this Olympic trip so matter-of-factly, as a step they expected to take, and Brown-Miller wonders if maybe she should shake them a little, or shout at them, “Don’t you get it? Don’t you know how lucky you are?”

For when Brown-Miller was 18 years old, all she could expect from the sport she loved was to play in a college club program and then put away her skates. There was no NCAA tournament for her sport and there would be no U.S. national team or world championships and certainly no Olympics.

There were no pro leagues and when she became a hockey coach, at the age of 25 for Princeton, that was just unbelievable because Brown-Miller thinks that there was maybe one other women’s coach of a college program in the country.

“Sometimes I don’t think the kids appreciate what’s happening for them,” Brown-Miller said Monday after the U.S. beat Sweden 7-1 for its second Olympic victory. “There’s been a lot that’s gone on before them to make this happen and they have so much to look forward to in the future. It’s hard when you’re that young to step back and see the big picture but, yeah, I kind of hope people see me as a pioneer a little bit.”

Brown-Miller is 31 and this Olympic experience is the end of her hockey road, not the beginning. Despite what her father says.

“My dad’s telling people I’ve retired before and come back, but this time I do mean it,” Brown-Miller said.