Mikkelson visits home with gold

St. Albert’s golden girl shared her Olympic story at Richard S. Fowler Catholic Junior High School and encouraged the junior high students to reach for the stars.

“The goals you have and the dreams you have, anything is possible if you put your mind to it,” two-time Olympic gold medallist Meaghan Mikkelson told an enrapt audience Thursday in her first appearance in St. Albert since the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. “The harder that you have to work to get it and the more sacrifices you have to make, the greater satisfaction you will get out of getting there.”

Mikkelson’s whirlwind stopover included visits to Father Jan School and the Hockey Alberta peewee AA provincial banquet.

On Saturday the City of St. Albert welcomes home the Team Canada defenceman at a public celebration starting at 1 p.m. at Servus Credit Union Place.

“I may live in Calgary but my heart is still in St. Albert and will always be,” said Mikkelson, who signed autographs and posed for pictures while showing off her gold medal to admiring students and teachers. “I wanted to make sure I got back to St. Albert as soon as possible and saw as many people as I could because I wouldn’t be where I am and I wouldn’t have accomplished what I did without everything the city has done for me and playing minor hockey growing up here. There is no way I would’ve made it to where I did so I’m excited to be back here with everyone and sharing my story.”

Mikkelson, 29, shed light on the highs and lows in her journey to Olympic glory.

“The most challenging time in my career was at the 2012 world championships. Team Canada is a real hard team to make but I think it’s an even harder team to keep your spot so in 2012 I had been on the team for five years and we were at the world championships in the gold medal game and I find myself sitting on the bench in the third period and into the overtime and I didn’t play a shift.

“I was a veteran on that team so after that experience I was kind of wondering what’s happening. I’ve been to the Olympics, won a gold medal, played in four world championships and here I am sitting on the bench. It was at that point where my spot on the team was really in jeopardy and we’re just two years from the Olympic Games so I had to go back and do some soul searching and really think about where I was in my career. It looked like that might have been the end or close to the end but I think it was the beginning of something,” said Mikkelson, who was selected the top defenceman at the 2011 worlds.

“How many of you ever felt like giving up and quitting? You felt like that’s too hard and I can’t do this anymore. That’s how I felt like at that moment. I was crushed. I felt like throwing in the towel. I had an Olympic gold medal. That was my dream, my goal since I was young but I wanted more than that and I wasn’t going to let these circumstances dictate my path. I wasn’t ready to be done so it was at that point where I said to myself I’m really going to challenge myself here and see how great I can become. I pushed myself harder than I’ve ever pushed before so from that low point I took that experience from that situation and I helped it make me a stronger person and ultimately a better player.”

Hand injury

Mikkelson overcame adversity to play in the gold-medal game after breaking a bone in her right hand in practice the day before the semifinal against Switzerland. She finished the epic 3-2 overtime thriller against the United Sates with 21:44 minutes of ice time and recorded her first point in two Olympics, an assist on Brianne Jenner’s goal with 3:26 left in regulation time to cut the American’s 2-0 lead in half.

“I could’ve made the pass a lot sooner than I did but I couldn’t feel my bottom hand on the stick so I actually had to hold onto the puck for an extra couple of seconds and it ended up going off the boards and she went down and scored as I went off for a change,” Mikkelson said. “It was pretty exciting. Who would’ve ever though that breaking my hand gave me the patience to make that pass because who knows if she would’ve scored otherwise?”

The magnitude of the moment didn’t hit home until the post-game medal presentation.

“My hand is all wrapped up, it’s kind of a mess, and I’m standing there thinking (the presenter) is going to try and shake my hand. He comes to me, puts my medal around my neck and tries to shake my hand. He tries to shake my hand four times and I finally had to say to him it’s broken and it was in that moment that I realized that I just played in the gold medal game with a broken hand,” Mikkelson said.

“One of the greatest moments was when Danielle Goyette, our assistant coach, came up to me after the game and she said how proud she was of me for playing through an injury like that. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life was playing in that game with my hand the way it was and it was great to know it was appreciated. It made me think a lot about my entire career and what winning a gold medal really meant.

“I realized that Vancouver (in 2010) was incredible. Winning an Olympic gold medal on home soil was absolutely amazing but I think for me this medal meant just a little bit more because of what I had to go through to get there and all the sacrifices, but it wasn’t until after the game that I realized that.”

Mikkelson’s hand was taped up and frozen for the big game.

“I kept the injury very quiet because we didn’t want the Americans to find out because they would probably go after me,” said Mikkelson, who only told her parents, Bill and Betsy, and husband, Scott Reid, about the injury.

“My coach (Kevin Dineen) didn’t want me to leave our building in the (athlete’s) village. I couldn’t even go eat. I had to get my teammates to bring me food because if the Americans saw me in the cafeteria they would know so I was kind of in quarantine for a couple of days.”

During the question-and-answer portion of Mikkelson’s presentation, there was a query about the American’s trash talking in the gold-medal showdown.

“I don’t feel so bad for beating the Americans because of the amount of chirping that was happening. You didn’t see it on TV because it all happened in between the whistles. They were skating by our bench giving it to us so we were very happy with the outcome,” Mikkelson said.

Another question was about the level of excitement Mikkelson felt while going to the Bolshoy Ice Dome to play the Americans.

“It’s a surge of emotions. I was lucky this time around because I experienced Vancouver and walking into GM Place to play that game in front of about 18,000 fans, talk about your emotions going through the roof. This time around there weren’t quite that many fans but I knew what to expect and I knew kind of how to handle myself to get myself to a point where I could play my best,” said Mikkelson, one of 12 returning players from the 2-0 win over the Americans in 2010.

And it all started in St. Albert for Mikkelson, the first female to play rep boys’ hockey in the city with the 1997 atom AA provincial champion TD Lightning who would later cracked the bantam AAA roster of the Sabres as a forward.

“I attribute a lot of my development to playing boy’s hockey. At that time we didn’t have the female program that’s now in place in St. Albert so it’s amazing to see how much it’s grown,” said the two-time NCAA champion with the Wisconsin Badgers.

“Looking back I’m just very thankful that St. Albert minor hockey and all the coaches and all the guys that I grew up playing with and all the parents were all so supportive and accepting to have a girl on an all-boy’s team when it wasn’t as common. Those boys pushed me hard and I took a lot of grief from some of them growing up but I think it made me a stronger person and it made me a stronger player.”