Some of the best young hockey players in the country will soon gather in Lake Placid for the annual\u00a0USA Hockey Women’s National Festival.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an event that helps support the strength of women\u2019s hockey, with players either in college or high school competing for roster spots, with goals of eventually representing the United States of America.<\/p>\n
Of course, the women\u2019s Olympic team won gold earlier this year in Italy, and the woman who helped shape the roster and will play a big role in the festival is from Central New York.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Katie Million, born in Hannibal and a state employee for nearly 20 years, helped shape the 2026 U.S. women’s hockey team that won gold in the Olympics
\n
Million says making the calls on who made the team and who didn’t was very tough and also rewarding
\n
Million returned home after the Olympics and a number of players from the 1980 Miracle on Ice team were at the airport to greet her<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be back here now celebrating that gold medal, you know, and where my Olympic roots really started is, is incredibly special,\u201d Katie Million said.<\/p>\n
Born in Oswego County, the village of Hannibal, Million knows New York state and Lake Placid. In fact, she worked for the Olympic Regional Development Authority there for some 17 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so thankful that I have a circle of people that, you know, I can share that with,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That, the gold medal, is from in February. The Olympics in Italy saw the U.S. women’s hockey team knock off Canada in overtime to win it all. Million is the team’s general manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m up in a suite overlooking that [overtime game-winning] goal, and we’re just jumping up and down like children. It was unbelievable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
From Hannibal, to shaping that gold medal roster, Million\u2019s journey is as interesting as they come. While working with ORDA in Lake Placid a decade ago, she helped start the Miracle on Ice Fantasy Camp, where people could come spend a week with the 1980 U.S. men’s gold medal-winning hockey team. That team was so impressed with what she did for them, they asked her to manage them appearances, autograph signings and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my jaw dropped and I was like, here wasn’t a hesitation, of course I’ll help you, you know?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my god, she’s amazing. I don’t know how she does the stuff she does,\u201d 1980 player Neal Broten said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe say she\u2019s herding cats, is what she\u2019s doing. We\u2019d be lost without her,\u201d 1980 player Mike Ramsey said.<\/p>\n
It was a couple of players from that miracle team that helped convince Million to apply for what would be her next job, the commissioner of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association out in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m like, I don’t even know what a commissioner does. Why would I go for that?\u201d she remembers.<\/p>\n
It turns out that the requirements for the job were very similar to what she did at ORDA and volunteering with the 1980 team. It’s a job that also led her to where she is today. So good at it that the U.S. national team came calling and she’s now the director and general manager of the U.S. Women’s Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opportunity to be involved in the Olympic movement and possibly go to the Olympics and compete for a gold medal with a team, I couldn’t turn it down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
And now Million is an Olympic champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cStanding there arm in arm with the people that you went to war with. Singing the national anthem was something that I’ll never forget,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
And when Million and a few other members of the team returned home, on a flight to Minnesota, waiting for her were friends and a number of those players who won that gold 46 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust to show them that we watched the game and you guys did a great job and that we supported you,\u201d Broten, whose girlfriend planned the arrival party, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, she has no friends, so we thought we\u2019d better get to the airport and greet her,\u201d Ramsey joked. \u201cNo, we were excited for her and we thought we\u2019d surprise her and it made all of us feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just another moment this year that\u00a0Million will never forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the best young hockey players in the country will soon gather in Lake Placid for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[21337,23,335232,17045,3,212309,99,21,19,22,20,25,24,13309],"class_list":["post-788094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-america","tag-brian-dwyer","tag-central-ny","tag-news","tag-northern-ny","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}