Five Eagles Set for Olympic Debuts Sunday

When the U.S. women's national hockey team faces off against Finland at 4:40 p.m. on Sunday (2:40 a.m. ET), five Boston College players will be available to make their Olympic debuts

Alumnae Emily Pfalzer '15 and Haley Skarupa '16 are joined by current Eagles Cayla Barnes '22, Kali Flanagan '19 and Megan Keller '19 on the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team.

The U.S. is one of the two favorites for gold in PyeongChang, along with the other world power: Canada.

In this the 20-year anniversary of women's hockey joining the Olympic Games in 1998, the Americans will look to bring home their second gold in Olympics history.

After winning the inaugural gold in 1998 – a team which included current Boston College head coach Katie (King) Crowley – the U.S. has only managed four silvers and a bronze since. The gold-medal winners those years? Canada. (You can read a first-person account about the first Olympics experience in 1998 from members of the team, including Crowley here from NBC Sports.)

The five Eagles on the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team have taken very different paths to PyeongChang.

After successful stints with the U.S. Under-18 teams, both Pfalzer and Keller have become stalwarts on the U.S. blue line since 2014. Pfalzer was a senior at BC and Keller a freshman when they both debuted with the senior national team at the 2014 Four Nations Cup. The duo has since been part of three straight IIHF World Championship teams (2015, 2016, 2017), and have been consistent presences on every U.S. team assembled for training camps and both unofficial and official competitions since 2014.

Pfalzer and Keller were part of the U.S.' original 23-player 2017-18 U.S. National Team that was centralized in the Tampa, Florida, area in late August, and have been playing with the squad all year after making the team after last May's tryout.

After initial debuting with the senior national team in 2010 at the Four Nations Cup as a 17-year old, Skarupa was brought back into the senior team fold in 2014 during her junior year at BC, joining Pfalzer and Keller at the Four Nations Cup. Also like the two defensemen, she also has been a member of the last three gold-medal winning world championship teams.

Unlike Pfalzer and Keller, however, Skarupa was cut from the 2017-18 U.S. National Team last May after tryouts. As she told the Baltimore Sun, she was so devastated, she initially considered quitting the game.

But, instead, she signed with the Boston Pride of the NWHL to continue staying in shape. Her dedication paid off as USA Hockey called her down to Tampa to train with the national team during the fall and, eventually, she was brought in as a full member of the 2017-18 Women's National Team just after Thanksgiving. When the final 23-player Olympic roster was announced on New Year's Day, she was among the 11 forwards on the team.

Flanagan is one of the more recent additions the U.S. National Team, only making her full senior team debut in March 2017 at the IIHF World Championships. A regular invitee to training camps and the annual Women's National Team Festival since 2015, she was a two-time member of the U.S. Under-22 Team in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, she broke through and earned a spot on the full national team for the first time, a member of the team at the 2017 IIHF World Championships. After last May's tryouts, she was also centralized in Tampa with the original 23-player 2017-18 U.S. National Team roster.

The youngest member of Team USA, Barnes was also cut from the 2017-18 Women's National Team after tryouts last May. Just 18 at the time, Barnes went ahead with her original plans and enrolled at Boston College for her freshman year. After making her debut with the senior national team in December 2016 at just 17 years old, she was the only three-time gold medalist at the IIHF Women's Under-18 World Championships in the event's history and had just led the U18s to its third-straight gold in January 2017 as its captain.

Five games into BC's season and already a regular contributor on the Eagles' blue line, Barnes was called into the 2017-18 Women's National Team. They were centralizing her in Tampa, too. Eight weeks into her freshman year, Barnes had to withdraw from school and uproot her life. It wasn't an opportunity she was going to pass up, however, as she explained to the New England Hockey Journal.

She was the first addition to the original 23-player lineup in Tampa, and she went on to appear in all of the U.S.' The Time is Now Tour games against Canada and in the 2017 Four Nations Cup – which the U.S. won. When the final roster was announced on Jan. 1, she was among the final 23 players named to the 2018 Olympic Team.

Barnes will now re-start her freshman year at Boston College this coming August, both academically and athletically.

Five Eagles, five different stories. But come Sunday, they will all have one common goal: a gold medal at the 2018 Olympic Games.

Five Eagles Set for Olympic Debuts Sunday

Related News

Players Mentioned

Cayla Barnes

Kali Flanagan

Megan Keller

Related Videos