After winning gold at the World para Ice Hockey Women's World Challenge, athlete Sarah Bettencourt sets her sights on a new goal.
In honor of International Women's Day, we are sharing once again the story of Sarah Bettencourt and the incredible athletes on the U.S. Women's National Sled Hockey Team.
You would think winning a gold medal in international competition would be the ultimate goal for para ice hockey athlete Sarah Bettencourt.
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It isn't.
On August 28, Sarah and her U.S.A. Women's National Sled Hockey Team won gold at the inaugural World Para Ice Hockey Women's World Challenge held in Green Bay, WI. Four teams from around the world came together for the event where Sarah and her teammates won the gold medal game over Team Canada in decisive fashion. Surely repeating their championship win in 2023 is now the ultimate goal for Sarah.
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It isn't.
To understand what drives Sarah and to understand her ultimate goal, you need to know a bit of Sarah's story.
Sarah has always been an athlete with a "no challenge is too big" attitude. Sarah competed in multiple sports growing up including soccer and softball. Sarah played ice hockey on a women's club team and in high school became the only female on her high school's hockey team.
"That's when I really fell in love with the sport," Sarah said, "because I loved the fast pace, I loved the physicality, and really just the team bonding aspect was really cool."
Sarah's competitive drive and appreciation of being a valuable part of a team led her to pursue a career as a helicopter pilot for the Marine Corps after high school. While in training, Sarah developed a rare neurological disorder that eventually resulted in the loss of her ability to walk and the functionality necessary for her to fly for the military. Sarah was medically discharged and suddenly found herself struggling to find a new direction.
-"I went from serving our nation making a difference, being a part of something so much bigger than myself to absolutely nothing. I felt like I had lost everything that I had worked for, everything I cared about."
One day Sarah got a phone call inviting her to an adaptive skiing event. Sarah's initial reaction was skepticism. After a very persistent invitation, Sarah headed to the adaptive sporting event and tried mono skiing where Sarah had a realization.
"I realized like - holy cow - I can still do all the things I love to do with my friends and family. I can still do things and be out and be active. I just might have to change how I do it," Sarah said.
At the same event there was a sled hockey clinic. Sled hockey, also called para ice hockey or sledge hockey, is similar to traditional stand up hockey except that players sit in sleds that are balanced on two skate blades and play with two smaller sticks. The two hockey sticks have picks on the ends that are used to propel the sled across the ice. When Sarah sat in the sled and got back out onto the ice, checking people, shooting and scoring goals, she knew she had found her next challenge.
When she returned home to San Diego, Sarah couldn't find a local sled hockey club to play with so she leaned on her "no challenge is too big" attitude and started a club affiliate with the NHL's Anaheim Ducks. In 2015, Sarah tried out for the U.S. women's national team and has been a part of Team U.S.A. ever since.
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Sarah now employs the same persistence it initially took to get her to try adaptive sports to grow the sport of sled hockey nationally and internationally. Persistence has been necessary. It hasn't always been easy for female sled hockey athletes.
While local sled hockey teams are co-ed, the international para ice hockey community has struggled with how to best incorporate top level female sled hockey players into the highest level of international competition. For many years, para ice hockey has been touted as a "co-ed" sport at the Paralympic level, allowing national teams to add a female athlete as an 18th player on what is typically a 17 man roster for international competition.
From the outside, the "18th player" rule looks like an incentive for countries to incorporate female athletes. Three women have competed at the Paralympics for their national teams, but most national teams don't have the finances nor the willingness to navigate the more complicated logistics involved with bringing a female sled hockey player. The rule actually did the opposite by allowing nations to say "This is a co-ed sport. You just need to work harder to make the team" but not providing enough actual opportunity for female athletes to participate. There are even instances of top level female sled hockey players who were fast enough and talented enough with stick handling, shooting, and goal scoring to keep up with the men of the sport but who were told point blank - you will never make the team because you're a woman.
Not ones to sit back and watch opportunity pass them by, Sarah, her teammates and her coaches made it their goal to grow the sport of sled hockey in the U.S. and to recruit and develop top female talent from across the country. Their mission has been aided by the support of U.S.A. Hockey and the NHL's commitment to establish affiliate sled hockey programs for each NHL team, but a lot of the groundwork has been laid at the local, grassroots level using the same persistence it took to get Sarah back on the ice herself.
"It's truly the grassroots level, it's truly the personal relationships that all of our female players create anytime we see another female on the ice or someone who could play and inviting them and being persistent," Sarah explained. "I had to have someone persistent with me."
The persistence is paying off. The U.S. women's sled hockey program excels in not just recruiting but also developing the deep pool of talent on display in Green Bay in August. Sarah credits her coaches and teammates for continuously raising the bar for the women's national team.
Leading up to their development camp, the women's national team coaching staff established an accountability system. The players connected regularly with their accountability partner about workouts and training and then practiced on-ice skills in their respective cities individually so that when the group came together to prepare for international competition, the players were ready. At development camp, the coaches turned those individual skills into systems and then applied those systems in scrimmages and game like situations. The result was an undefeated Team U.S.A. at the Women's World Challenge.
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That's not to say that other nations aren't working hard to grow their programs as well. Team Canada and Team Great Britain competed in Green Bay and female sled hockey players from a handful of other countries joined together to compete as Team World. Sarah, like many of the female sled hockey athletes, is hopeful that other countries will invest in their own female sled hockey programs so that the Paralympics will eventually expand to include a female para ice hockey competition. The strategic plan is to hopefully see this happen in time for the 2030 Paralympic Games.
While it is Sarah's goal to compete at the Paralympics for Team U.S.A. one day, even that benchmark isn't her ultimate goal.
So what is?
"I am really excited for the day when these younger female amazing athletes come to tryouts and destroy me. I am so looking forward to getting burned in sprints and getting outshot and out checked and outpaced because then I know I've done my job setting the standard for the next generation to come and just be amazing athletes," Sarah shares passionately.
-"So yes, I would personally love to go to the Paralympics, and I will fight for my spot, but I will be honored and thankful and excited and proud if don't make the team because that means we have so many amazing players that I'm just not good enough. And I love that."
Sarah's ultimate goal is to one day not be a U.S.A. women's national team sled hockey player.