Folks, what will the most heroic girl in your heart look like?
Maybe there are cool and neat hairstyles, maybe there is the courage to walk away, they have the determination to stick to their dreams to the end, and even dare to do what many boys dare not do - close their eyes and imagine that if they were born in ancient times, they might be majestic female generals, Mulan's father joined the army, Gui Ying was in front of the army, Hongyu beat the drum to retreat from gold, and women were good at pacifying the states.
In fact, brave girls have always existed throughout human history. Right around us, there is still a group of girls in armor who are fighting for the country, and they are about to embark on the most important battlefield of their lives with the dream of accumulating ten years.
Their common name is called the Chinese Women's Ice Hockey Team.
/ Image from the Internet
Ten years of drinking ice, hard to cool the blood
Be you for you
As a rare collective sport in winter sports, the ice hockey project is extremely confrontational and highly ornamental, but its development in China has undergone several twists and turns, especially the Chinese women's ice hockey, which was a regular visitor to the world's top four in the 90s.
In 1998 Nagano, Chinese female ice skaters made their debut and entered the top four.
But unfortunately, China's women's ice team has not taken off, because of the institutional reform, the number of domestic women's ice hockey teams in the late 90s has been greatly reduced, from about ten in the mid-1980s to only one seedling left in Harbin. Without their own league and lack of a competitive environment, the Chinese women's ice team gradually began to lose the ability to compete with the European and American teams, and even fate was a huge joke with the Chinese women's ice hockey team in 2004.
It was the women's ice hockey qualifier at home in Beijing, and in the final round, China's home draw with Switzerland could qualify. But the five words "draw a draw and qualify" seem like a mantra in the history of Chinese sports.
In this battle with Switzerland, the game died when there were only 4 seconds left, because the timer was negligent, the game time was not stopped, and the referee on duty decided to let the game back 10 seconds to restart the ball after checking, and it was these 10 seconds that allowed the Swiss team to score the winning goal. Yu Baiwei, who was 16 years old at the time, seemed to be able to hear his heartbreak in front of the TV.
At that time, Yu Baiwei was already very sure where her life would lead: from the ice and snow sports family, her father was an ice hockey player, and her uncle was a figure skater, so she was familiar with various ice and snow sports since she was a child, and at the age of 9, Yu Baiwei chose to love ice hockey, because compared to other ice and snow sports, "At that time, I thought that playing ice hockey could be played with children." ”
After joining the Chinese women's ice, Yu Baiwei, who trained with the team outside.
Yu Baiwei only took 5 years to grow into a future star of women's ice hockey, but her selection for the national team was at a not so wonderful time: in 2005, the Chinese women's ice that missed Turin was replaced in a large area, and Yu Baiwei, who was only 17 years old, was selected for the national team for the first time, and then she has been fighting until today, and finally waited for a chance for Chinese women's ice to attack in the capital Beijing.
For many years, China's women's ice is not a popular team that has attracted much attention, and it is difficult to imagine that so many girls can stick to it for 10 or even 15 years, even the female ice predecessors who have retired to become coaches and then responded to the call of the state again. And this sense of fortitude and mission passed down from generation to generation is now completely inherited by Yu Baiwei.
Yu Baiwei has been the female ice captain for more than 10 years now, "I feel that I am the 'glue' in the team, to establish good communication between the coach and the players, to guide teammates to trust each other, and to unite into a whole."
In Vancouver in 2010, it was Yu Baiwei who fought against the Swiss players.
Mulan joined the army, and Wanli congronged
With the 2018 International Ice Hockey Federation voting 47-0 results, unanimously supporting the Chinese men's and women's ice hockey teams through the competition, the Chinese women's ice team has intensively promoted a new round of team building: not only us, eager to build a stronger team, but also the Chinese women's ice found that on the other side of the world, there are also many girls who are looking forward to the world's highest stage of women's ice hockey.
The girls' stories vary:
For example, Zhang Xifang, who was born in China in 2000 and was adopted by an American family at the age of 1, not only remembers that she is from China, but also regards the highest temple of world sports as her ultimate dream since she embarked on the ice rink at the age of 4.
For example, Hu Baozhen, she is a bully at Brown University, an Ivy League school, and a tough player in the NCAA hockey field, because her father is a Chinese, she feels that returning to China to play is fate, and it is also the best way for her to replace her father to realize her dreams.
Chinese women's ice skaters Yu Baiwei (right) and Hu Baozhen (left).
Remember what mulan wrote? These girls who stand out in the Chinese women's ice training camp may not have intersected before, but they have two huge commonalities, the first is a strong love for ice hockey, and the second is that they all have yellow skin and black hair, which makes them represent their families back to China.
And many people think that the goalkeeper Zhou Jiaying, who has an open life, can also represent another side of Mulan: she grew up practicing with boys.
Zhou Jiaying's mother is a Chinese, a typical "tiger mother", the daughter has any hobbies to fully support, but at the same time will also have quite strict requirements, so when Zhou Jiaying from the age of 5 to the ice rink, she learned to go all out at all times. 'At that time, I was on the ice with a lot of boys, but they thought I was a girl and they didn't want to pass the ball to me, so I decided to be a goalkeeper, so even if my teammates didn't pass the ball, I would have a chance to touch the ball if I blocked the opponent's shot."
Zhou Jiaying's graduation photo taken inside the Princeton University Hockey Hall.
The talented Zhou Jiaying seemed to have nothing she could not do well. On her studies, she was admitted to the Ivy League university Princeton University; on sports, she not only became the best goalkeeper of the varsity team in the NCAA, but even was selected for the Canadian national youth, and she could guard the door for the men's team in middle school; on work, Zhou Jiaying received an invitation from Wall Street after graduating from college and became a fund analyst. When she finally decided to quit her full-time job at Credit Suisse and come to China, Zhou Jiaying's determination to serve the country was beyond words.
Of course, there are always doubts about Zhou Jiaying and Kang Mulan: this group of players from the United States and Canada, although they have the same skin color as Yu Baiwei, do they really represent Chinese women's ice? In this regard, Zhou Jiaying said that she very much likes to return to China, often see her grandparents, and learn a lot of knowledge that she did not know in the past. She already has a good Chinese foundation, and since 2018, she has insisted on using her full Chinese to accept media interviews, such a girl, is not exactly what Chinese female ice needs?
Expedition to the mainland, not broken, not returned
2018 is a truly memorable year for Chinese women's ice hockey.
They are the first teams in the world to start preparing for this year's competition, because in addition to the introduction of talents, the Chinese Ice Association has previously launched another program to help Chinese women's ice skaters get unprecedented experience.
The plan is to form two clubs, which operate in a professional way, so that they can bring in high-level athletes from all over the world to train with Chinese players, and at the same time participate in the world's highest level of women's ice competitions. So Kunlun Hongxing and Vanke Sunshine two ice women's ice hockey teams came into being, and they began their preparation journey around the world four years in advance.
Both teams were high-level women's ice teams at the time, such as the upcoming Appearance of the American Women's Ice Team in Beijing, forward Alex Carpenter, defender Megan Bosek had played for Kunlun Hongxing for a long time, and many international players from other countries also had old acquaintances in the lineup. And practicing with these world's top players, Chinese women's ice has developed a special "one help one" plan, that is, each national player finds a foreign aid, one-on-one team, and provides accurate guidance.
Soon after their establishment, these two special teams joined CWHL, the world's highest level of Canadian women's ice hockey league at that time, and played 30 games with various teams from the hockey kingdom of Canada throughout the year, which helped The Chinese women's ice hockey achieve rapid progress. At CWHL, it was captain Yu Baiwei who scored the first goal for the Chinese players.
Yu Baiwei during the conquest of CWHL.
But the epidemic quickly swept the world, coupled with the CWHL League, although the level of competition is very high, but the financial situation is not good, the league was announced in April 2019, a month later, the Chinese women's ice waited for the news that the entire CWHL league collapsed and disappeared, and it no longer existed...
This news can be described as a flurry of preparation for Chinese women's ice, but for these girls who regard ice hockey as their life, there is no option to give up in life. In 2019, they began to play in Russia's WHL Continental Women's Ice League.
This expedition will encounter more troubles than before: language, culture, food, etc., Chinese women are up and down the ice, and they do not know much about the living environment in Russia, but all difficulties have not stopped them from becoming more and more courageous. In the 2019-20 season, in the name of the club, the Chinese women's ice team defeated the Russian powerhouse Ufa team 3-0 in the finals of the season, which not only created a miracle of the new army winning the championship, but also won the first world top professional league championship trophy for Chinese ice hockey.
Chinese women's ice won the 2020 WHL championship.
At the end of December 2021, The Chinese women's ice ended the third degree of conquest in the WHL and returned to China to start the final sprint for this year's war, because there are constantly new people joining, and this run-in process has always continued. In the season that just ended, the Chinese women's ice skating won 15 and lost 7 in 22 rounds of the league, ranking third in the WHL, and head coach Brian Idarski expressed quite satisfaction with the success rate of the team at this stage. Captain Yu Baiwei also said: "For a team like ours that has just been formed, the current results are still quite ideal. ”
Not for whom, become who
The expedition to Wanli, five years of preparation, this is the unknown story of The Chinese women's ice, but all this does not mean that they will be able to relive the glory of the past - on the upcoming world stage, only 10 teams have been shortlisted for the finals, while the Chinese team is ranked 20th in the world, and of all the other 9 participating teams, the lowest ranking in the world is the 11th Danish team.
In 2002, she conquered the Chinese female ice in Salt Lake City.
What a brutal battle this is for Chinese female ice, and these simplest numbers seem to be enough to show. In terms of format, the lower-ranked Chinese team was divided into Group B of five teams, and the top three in this group were eligible to continue to fight in the quarterfinals. Such a format design also further avoids the possibility of the emergence of unpopularity, and the Chinese female ice wants to make a difference, only to fight with every opponent for this way out.
However, this is the only way out of life.
In 2022, It is a report performance that Chinese ice and snow athletes will soon present to the whole country and the world, but among them, whether it is the audience's expectations or the attention of society, Chinese female ice may not be in the top few, but this is not exactly the most real state of most of the life in the world.
Don't care if the end result of your efforts is in line with the expectations of the world, just ask yourself if you really do your best every day.
So when Yu Baiwei mentioned her expectations for 2022, she said bluntly, "I hope that every day can be better, I hope that every game can be better, so that everyone can see different Chinese women's ice." ”
Not for whom, become who. For the sake of long-term dreams, for the sake of unremitting persistence, go all out and swing it.