No longer in the game, Harper Woods’ Angela Ruggiero still leads

2013 October 17. | Szerző: shannon |

As a hockey player, Angela Ruggiero was anything but diplomatic. Sharp elbows and intimidation were as much a part of her game as quick hands and dominating defense. The Ruggiero of today?

As a member of the International Olympic Committee, U.S. Olympic Committee board member, and president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, Ruggiero has learned how to curtsy before queens and bow to diplomacy. Don’t even get her started on cheek kissing.

“On the ice no one would have expected her to be quite so popular in the field of foreign relations,” said Caitlin Cahow, her friend and former teammate at Harvard and the U.S. national team. “I don’t think anyone ever mistook one of her checks for diplomacy, or her slapshot for peaceful negotiations.”

Tonight Ruggiero, a Harper Woods native, will wear a fancy dress and toast athletes ranging from 18-year-old swimmer Missy Franklin to 64-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad at the Women’s Sports Foundation’s annual awards gala in New York City.

Of all the hats and helmets she wears, Ruggiero’s involvement with the Women’s Sports Foundation is closest to her heart. In 1998, after capturing gold in her sport’s Olympic debut in Nagano, the U.S. women’s hockey team was honored. Ruggiero, the youngest on that team, was blown away by the athletes she met.

“I thought, ‘Wow this is so cool.’ I just liked hockey. I had something to prove because I got cut from boys teams,” Ruggiero said. In a room full of legends, she saw potential and opportunity. “After that I stay involved and weaseled my way into the organization, saying please let me know if I can help in any way.”

Ruggiero joined the foundation’s board in 2009 and became president this year.”She just wants to make a difference in the world,” said Billie Jean King, who started the foundation in 1974. “She’s very flexible, she’s nimble. She can do different things, have different roles in different situations.”

Even when she finds herself in very different situations, especially as an IOC member.

Such as her meeting with Queen Elizabeth II: “So we’re supposed to curtsy. I never curtsied before. So I just lowered my head like I’m used to in Korea.”

Or learning the art of European cheek kissing: “When you’re in Switzerland, it’s three kisses. In France, it’s two. When you see an American or Canadian overseas, what do you do? I just go for it, every time. This is how it is. This is our world.”

This too is Ruggiero’s role. At last month’s IOC session in Buenos Aires, the future of three sports was being decided and wrestling was trying to rejoin the Games. Usually IOC question-and-answer sessions are filled with self-important bloviating instead of substance.

However, after wrestling’s leaders delivered their pitch to IOC members, Ruggiero raised her hand and asked about the absence of gender equity in Greco-Roman wrestling.

“That was a Title IX question, about the participation and quality of funding,” she said in an interview later. “The IOC is pushing to try to get 50(PERCENT) (female) participation and we were 44(PERCENT) in London. The only way we are going to be able to move the needle is if we require and ask every federation to have an equal number. Their response usually is women haven’t shown interest. Usually the reason people don’t do it is because the opportunity doesn’t exist.”

As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, Ruggiero elbowed her way onto her brother’s hockey team. In 2005, she would become the first woman (non-goalie) to play professional men’s hockey in North America, for the Tulsa Oilers alongside her brother, Bill. They entered the Hockey Hall of Fame as the first brother-sister duo to play pro hockey together.

The Sochi Games in February will be the first Olympics without Ruggiero, 33, on the blue line. Considered one of the best defenders in women’s hockey history, Ruggiero retired in 2011 after playing more games in a Team USA uniform than any other player (256), winning three world championships and four Olympic medals (gold, 2 silver and a bronze).

The only hockey she plays now is for her Harvard Business School team. (Yes, in her free time she’s getting an MBA.)

“We beat McGill in the final for the McArthur Cup,” she said, smiling. “It’s a fun league. The only other woman on the team played at Harvard as an undergrad. It was like growing up, playing with the boys.”

This past summer Ruggiero worked as an intern for a hedge-fund management group. What she’s learning with the IOC, USOC and Women’s Sports Foundation also carries over to the classroom. In 2007, her business savvy impressed Donald Trump when she was a contestant on “The Apprentice,” a year after she graduated from Harvard (with Cum Laude honors). After her run ended on the show, Trump offered her a job anyway. She turned him down to compete in her fourth Olympics.

Ruggiero travels about 80 days a year, much of it internationally. She frequently shows up in class with luggage, either because she’s going someplace or just returned.

Those who played with her aren’t surprised with what she’s juggled beyond Harvard. “I always marvel at what she’s able to accomplish. There’s always been an unflappable grace to her,” said Cahow, who’s in law school at Boston College. “From day one she’s been able to balance so many balls in the air at once. These are massive endeavors that normal people would only tackle at one time, but Angela manages to take them all in stride and do a fantastic job.”

Still Ruggiero’s off-ice diplomacy may face a test in the near future. Her old nemesis, Hayley Wickenheiser, the longtime captain of the Canadian team, is running for election to the IOC Athletes Commission. (Athletes will vote in Sochi.)

IOC member Dick Pound of Canada laughs at the possibility. “I don’t how well Angela and Hayley know each other,” Pound said. “They probably knew each other’s elbows. They can say to each other, ‘Let me show you my bruises.’”

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