The Canadian National Women’s Hockey Team program just finished a selection camp for the Olympic team this week. In just over 12 months, these elite women’s hockey players will face off against their arch rivals from the United States, and the up-and-coming teams from Sweden and Finland, in what promises to be the most competitive international women’s hockey event ever at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

The rest of the female hockey world may be starting to catch up with the North American teams, but Canada’s talent pool has never been deeper. The next 12 months are going to be an absolutely dogfight between 37 players who have been identified as being in the running for the Olympic team. Other than a handful of shoe-ins, the rest of the women in the Canadian National Women’s Team program are going to have to fight it out to get their shot at winning the first ever gold medal for Canada on Canadian soil.

For years, the majority of the women’s national team rosters for both Canada and the US were fairly predictable. There may have been a few surprises every year, but for the most part, a core group of women made up those two teams for 8-12 years.

With the incredible growth of women’s hockey since the first Olympics in 1998, this is no longer the case. Each and every practice, off-ice workout and exhibition game is a tryout. The players will be under constant scrutiny on and off the ice.

And I think this intense level of competition is essential to the growth of elite women’s hockey on both sides of the border.

There can be no more complacency within the teams, with players who have been there before getting an automatic advantage over their peers. Every player will need to earn their spot every day, because if they don’t, someone else will be at the ready to swoop in and take their spot. This need to compete on a daily basis in order to make the team will serve both the Canadian and US teams well against the rest of the women’s hockey world.

It’s not like the elite female hockey players weren’t working hard to be the best in the world before, but now they have to take it to a whole new level of intensity in order to get their shot at making it to the Games.

There will come a time, in the not so distant future, where this new level of commitment and desire will seep down into the younger age groups of female hockey and require players to do all the little things that will allow them to separate themselves from their competition. The willingness to be the best on the ice will no longer be enough. The commitment to taking your game to the next level off the ice, with a focus on off-ice training, nutrition and mental performance, will eventually become the norm. But for now, the willingness to work as hard off the ice as you do on the ice, will still make you stand out from the crowd and might be the final factor that allows you to make the team.

Are you doing all the little things off the ice that will put you ahead of your competition?

In order to get to the top of the women’s hockey world, you need to:

Work Hard. Dream BIG.

~ Coach Kim