The family lived in Alaska then and when they drove down the road they saw kids playing ice hockey on outdoor rinks and the little girl said she wanted to do that.
When she was 5, she went to the babysitter in the mornings. There was an ice rink in the backyard and she skated until it was time to go to school. Then during recess, she skated again.
Returning to the babysitter in the afternoon, she went back on the ice until her parents picked her up at 6 o’clock.
She couldn’t get enough. “My parents said I had this immense amount of drive,” she said. “I would fall down and get right back up.”
The babysitter had two children who played hockey and was a pretty good judge of whether a kid “had it” or not. And “she has it,” she said of the little girl.
When she was 6, she joined a team – a boys team. Even at that age, she was very intense and very hard on herself. “She would be crying on the way home if she didn’t score a goal,” her mother said.
Brooke Whitney scored goals, many goals, in the years to come, and 16 years after she took up hockey, she put the crowning touch on her amateur career this season, winning what is equivalent to college football’s Heisman Trophy, the Patty Kazmaier Award, which is given annually to the women’s collegiate ice hockey player displaying the highest standards of personal and team excellence during the season.
Yes, the little girl grew up to fulfill her dream of playing hockey. And she played it exceedingly well.
“Brooke deserved the Kazmaier,” said Heather Linstad, the coach who recruited Whitney to Northeastern University in Boston. “She stood out every time she played. She was a force for Northeastern.”
Just how much of a force can be measured in her numbers.
“She was in on 52 percent of our scoring, whether it was goals or assists,” said Joy Woog, the coach who took over the Northeastern program after Whitney’s sophomore year. “She’s the type of kid who just gets it done. She put the team on her back.”
The team rode her to a 27-7-1 record this season and to within one victory of the “Frozen Four,” the national tournament. She finished the season with 56 points, including 32 goals, nine of which were game-winners. Among her honors were player of the year by both the Eastern College Athletic Conference and the New England Hockey Writers Association, and first-team All-American.
Life has been good, very good, for the girl who became a young woman and always played the game with passion. “We didn’t push her into it, she pushed us into it,” said her mother, Carole Whitney. “She always played full blaze.”
Brooke Whitney did most of her growing up in the Puget Sound region, aside from those five years in Alaska, and the family eventually settled in Snohomish, but she opted to attend Bothell High School.
She played varsity softball for three years and could have played in college, but wasn’t about to forsake her first love, ice hockey. “I love softball to death,” she said last week from Northeastern, where she has a year to go before earning a degree in marketing. “But in ice hockey, every situation is different. In all my years, I’ve never run into the same situation.”
They say she took to the ice as if she were born on skates. She was on a little kids ski team before she skated and thinks that helped her make the transition to ice. “If you’re a good skier,” she said, “you’re not going to struggle that much skating.”
Her mother said Brooke was always one of the best skaters for her age and that continued right on through college. “She just flies,” said Ben Miller, who works with the hockey program in the Northeastern sports information department. “And she can finish off plays.”
Brooke didn’t start playing on girls teams until her junior year of high school. If she was going to play in college, she knew she had to get exposure playing in girls tournaments.
Linstad was “looking for a goal scorer” when she recruited Whitney to Northeastern. “She has a knack for the net,” said Linstad, currently the women’s head coach at Connecticut. “She sees the ice well and she has deceptive speed.”
Whitney began honing her skills on boys teams when the family moved back to Seattle as she was about to enter the fourth grade. After a week-long tryout, she was assigned to her first team in the Seattle Junior Hockey Association. “They called my name to go into the Mite A locker room,” she recalled, “and the coach said, ‘I want to ask the players if they would like you to be part of our team.’ It was basically to see if I had gained their respect.”
She had and she spent that year on a select travel team.
Letters from colleges started arriving after she attended a National Development Camp at Lake Placid. N.Y., at the age of 14. “By my senior year, I had a good amount of choices,” she said. “It was just a matter of sifting out (the non-contenders).”
Northeastern was the lucky selection.
“Heather Linstad … I knew from Olympic training camps,” Whitney said. “Her personality, everything fit.”
Whitney made an instant impact, scoring 42 points as a freshman. She was headed for an even better year as a sophomore when she and a teammate collided during warmups before the first ECAC game.
The resulting injury – a broken ankle – sidelined her for most of the season, but such was her determination that she still tried to train with a cast on her leg. That probably didn’t surprise anyone who knew her.
“The biggest thing she brings to the table is her professional approach and her desire,” Woog said. “She’s very diligent about her workouts, she pays great attention to detail, she never half-asses it.”
The driven players never do. They put everything they have into it. And so it is with Whitney. “Even in her pregame, she’s mentally preparing,” Woog said. “She’s visualizing.
“Basically, she has a goal – to make the Olympic team. And she does what is necessary behind the scenes.”
Whitney tried out for the 2002 U.S. Olympic team – she was one of 40 candidates chosen – but got cut. She wants to give it another shot in 2006, and to improve her game, she recently signed with a women’s professional league in Canada.
“Three of the girls on my team (the Brampton Thunder) were on the Olympic Canadian team,” she said. “This is the best league to play on in the world. This is where the elite girls go.”
The league is still trying to get established, so players don’t receive salaries, but are guaranteed full-time jobs off the ice.
Whitney said she will continue to play competitive hockey for at least four more years – or until she’s 26 – but don’t construe that to mean she’ll be hanging up her skates after that.
“I definitely will always be playing the game, even if it’s some pickup league,” she said. “I love it too much.”
Yes, the babysitter knew what she was talking about.
The little girl skating in her backyard “had it.”
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