Fallsnewspress.com - Freeman of the Press: Olympics is surprisingly compelling

by Laura Freeman, Reporter

Normally I don't watch Winter Olympics beyond some figure skating, but with snow piled several feet high outside and temperatures below freezing, why not?

The first event I watched was women's hockey. The U.S. team played China Feb. 14 and won 12-1.

Since I played on the Kent Twisters, a women's hockey team, for seven years, I soon got caught up in the action.

"Shoot the puck!" I kept shouting at the TV screen.

After the game during the news break, I got caught up in other chores when suddenly my husband informed me that "my team was on the news."

WKYC Channel 3 had sent a reporter to Kent, and she was playing goalie during one of the Twister practices.

Abby Greer, who joined the team shortly after I did, is its captain and appeared briefly on camera.

It was great to see the team still going strong and, hopefully, inspiring a lot more women to get involved in the sport.

Ice hockey requires young legs, which I no longer have, and a fierce competitive nature to battle over that little rubber puck.

But what I remember is the camaraderie and good times from being on a team.

On Feb. 17, I joined my husband, who was watching curling, and promptly began making fun of him for watching such a lame sport.

Ha! It didn't take long for me to get hooked. I'm still not sure if they're rocks or stones, but the goal, for those who have never seen a match, is to get your stone closer to the center of the circle.

It doesn't sound hard, but the other team can knock your stone out of the circle and also sets up blocks to make it harder for you to get a stone in the center.

The U.S. team actually had a lead in the 10 rounds they play, but Switzerland tied and then went ahead 7-6.

Although curling may not be the strong sport for the U.S. this year, hype for athletes Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White proved to be well earned.

I remember a time when amateur athletes was the rule. Pimpled face adolescents or college kids competed and then went back to "normal" lives. When professional athletes were allowed to enter the Olympics, many thought it would ruin them.

In a country where Olympians have to pay their own way, commercials, endorsements and guests spots on TV shows not only help to meet expenses but gives the public a face and person to cheer during competition.

I certainly wouldn't think twice about changing the channel during speed skating when Apolo Anton Ohno competes, except, hey, he's the guy who won "Dancing with the Stars."

Not only can he dance, he can skate -- really fast -- although he had only won a silver -- so far.

Lindsey Vonn got a lot of hype about her photograph on the Sports Illustrated cover -- usually a curse for disaster for any athlete before competing -- and her hurt shin, so I wasn't ready to cheer for her and was glad her teammate Julia Mancuso was in first place as the competition got under way. But after the downhill ski course was described as "concrete" and seeing at least four skiers wipe out on the course, I gained a whole lot of respect for those who made it to the bottom standing up. Vonn earned the gold and my respect.

The same with Shaun White. I had never seen snowboarding and considered it insane for anyone to tie their feet to a board, let alone jump 20 feet into the air and twist their body like a pretzel before landing on a steep wall that flung them to an opposite steep wall. Looks like a good way to break an arm, leg, etc.

Competitors were given two chances to complete the run through the halfpipe and the best score was kept between the two runs. Many of the competitors had height and the twist and turns on their series of jumps but failed to keep upright on their landings in the halfpipe.

White was last in the line-up and showed them all how it was done on his first round attempt, scoring 46.8. After everyone else completed their second round, White was still in first, but he took a "victory" run. He could have gone easy, letting his first-run score win him the gold medal, but everyone had been talking about his new move, "the Double McTwist 1260" -- you have to see it to understand it -- so he performed it and ended up with a 48.4 score.

He didn't do it to impress anyone. He did it because it was fun, and for us, he made it fun to watch.

E-mail: lfreeman@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3150