One of the reasons many people love hockey is that its players allow their actions, and not their words, to speak of their character. And on Wednesday, the women of the U.S. Olympic hockey program made headlines in their own country and in the game they love by announcing one hell of an action if a long-term, low-key battle of words didn’t lead to meaningful change.
The American women made it known they would boycott the upcoming IIHF world championship – to be hosted on U.S. soil in Plymouth, Michigan at the end of this month – if USA Hockey, national governing body for the sport, did not improve the financial package they receive for participating in the program. Currently, they’re paid $1,000 a month, but only during the six-month period leading up to the Olympics. For the other three-and-a-half years, they don’t get a penny.
In a transparent and flimsy attempt at public relations damage control, USA Hockey released a statement late Wednesday claiming players who represent their country at the 2018 PyeongChang Games could earn as much as $85,000. But that figure includes medal incentives and is the sum total of what each player would be paid over the course of a four-year period. Hardly a financial windfall that would fit them into anyone’s definition of a spoiled athlete. Compared to their Canadian counterparts – who earn approximately four times as much on a monthly basis, and who are paid throughout each and every year thanks to a combination of federal monies and Hockey Canada funds – the American women are woefully, shamefully underfunded.
As a result, rather than focusing all their energies on training and competing, the American women have had to devote much of their time toward merely surviving, taking on second jobs simply to pay the rent and eat. And yet, if they do win a gold medal at the next Olympics, nobody doubts USA hockey and a whole host of advertisers would be falling all over themselves to hold these competitors up as a product of the present-day system working as it should. Something about that stinks, and not a little.
A living wage is the least that can be provided to them, but this concept is somehow presented as an impossibility due to the excuse there’s less interest in the women’s side of the game. Here are the two biggest problems with that argument: firstly, it ignores the business tenet that you have to spend money to make money; and it ignores the growth that already has taken place in women’s hockey in the past two decades, and almost certainly hampers the potential to grow it even more in the years ahead.
If you truly are interested as a nation in winning at the highest levels of competition, you can’t nickel-and-dime the performers you’ll be depending on to do so. And suggesting that these athletes aren’t entitled to a decent return on their time and effort puts you in the same group as those who used to snicker and sneer prior to the turn of the century when some of us argued that hockey fans would indeed be invested emotionally and financially in the women’s game. A few years from now, when even more young women and fans of the women’s game have been produced, we’ll all look back and wonder how some were so callous and arrogant as to put limits on people who love the sport as much as anyone.
This is more than just a women’s hockey issue, of course. Equal pay is a problem for women in virtually all walks of life, in every corner of the world. But sport is supposed to inspire us to be better – not just in the heat of battle, but in the lead-up to it and in its aftermath – and this is an area in which USA Hockey can do far better. The idea that the organization will allow its best female players to sit out the world championship (which the U.S. has won in six of the past seven years) in favor of a group of lesser competitors is awful, and if it comes to pass, it will be a gigantic black mark on that organization that neither years nor future positive results will wash away.
As noted, the city of Plymouth will be hosting this year’s tournament. Its history includes a railroad station that is the only place in the state where the train tracks run in all four directions. In dealing with this crisis of their own making, USA Hockey has the opportunity to demonstrate the sport is just as accessible, that it runs and shines and benefits in all directions, and in a very real way, it is for everyone.
If they fail, it won’t be because of the young women who took a bold and brave step this week. They’re ready to let their actions speak for them and to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous lack of fortune. History and future generations will likely judge them kindly for it.