But even she can’t believe it happened quite so quickly.
Just days after having an Olympic gold medal placed around her neck, the 21-year-old forward is still letting the magnitude of what she and her Team Canada teammates achieved sink in.
She’s not sure it ever will.
“Sometimes , yeah, i think it has, but other times, no. It’s emotional, I think. When you think about it, every emotion possible goes through your body. It’s unexplainable to tell you exactly how I feel right now, but it’s amazing and it’s a dream come true,” said Irwin, reached in Calgary, where she’s taking a short post-Olympic break before returning home to Thunder Bay later this week for an extended stay.
Irwin, who had four goals and an assist in her Olympic debut, including a pair of goals in Canada’s 5-0 semifinal win over Finland, said nothing prepared her for the moment when she finally got her medal, marking the country’s third straight Olympic triumph.
“You watch them hang gold medals around many of your teammates’ necks, and I think that’s one of the greatest parts about it. Then finally it’s your turn and it’s been what you’ve been waiting for that whole time. It’s a lot of anticipation, and then when it happens, it’s yours forever,” Irwin said.
The experience is one she never wants to forget. She said she had high expectations of what the Olympic experience would be, but nothing in her dreams came close to the actual thing. Irwin, who took a year off from her studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where she won an NCAA title in her rookie season in 2007-08, said it was everything she thought it would be and more.
“The village was great, the facilities were great. Vancouver did an outstanding job hosting so many athletes, so many guests. And when you think about hockey-wise, we went there with a goal in mind and we got it done, so it’s more than I ever imagined,” said Irwin, who listed encounters with Canadian Olympic legend Clara Hughes and 2010 bronze medallist Joannie Rochette among her many off-ice highlights.
Irwin also had high expectations for herself, though if you’d told her a year ago she’d be an Olympic champion in 2010, she might not have believed you. Targeted by Hockey Canada and named to the under-22 squad in 2007, within two years she was competing for time with the senior team, winning a silver medal at last year’s world championship.
By last summer she’d proven her worth, and was centralized with more than two dozen Olympic hopefuls, each with dreams of playing on home ice in Vancouver.
“When I got that call, and I got that opportunity, I told myself that this was the opportunity I’d been waiting for and I wasn’t going to let it pass,” Irwin said. “So, yeah, I might have been the underdog coming in, but I got the opportunity and I took it.”
She’s more than happy with the way she performed in Vancouver.
“I think our line, it’s not necessarily our role to score goals, but we worked hard all tournament, and we got goals. That’s kind of an added bonus for our line. It’s definitely fun to be able to score goals, because to hear that crowd erupt is awesome.”
Whether or not it continues to erupt for women’s hockey remains to be seen. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge made damning statements about the sport’s future prior to the gold medal game, saying other countries have to improve or else the sport might be eliminated. While Canada steamrolled Slovakia 18-0 in their first game and soundly defeated Switzerland 10-1 and Sweden 13-1 in their other round robin games, Irwin said competition is getting tighter on the world stage and the women’s game, still in its infancy, needs time to grow.
“It’s not something that changes overnight. Other countries need to catch up, and they are catching up. If you look at the history of other sports, look at other sports and how long the world took to catch up to Canada. If you look at other sports, like luge and skeleton, they were dominated by Germany for so long. So it’s not just women’s hockey that had domination. It’s going to pick up. Other countries are going to catch up. But we need the world not to give up on that,” Irwin said.
One thing Irwin would like the world to give up on is the controversy that surrounded the spontaneous post-game, on-ice celebration Team Canada players took part in at Canada Hockey Place, a party that saw players swigging beer and champagne and puffing on cigars.
Irwin said the team has apologized for any impropriety that might have taken place, including underage drinking, but to the players the incident is over and should be left in the past.
“We won a gold medal. And unfortunately I think that is being overshadowed by the fact that we took a sip of beer. And I think that’s sad. I think that sucks that that is more important to some people than the fact that we won our country a gold medal.”
All is forgiven Haley. Congratulations on a job well done.
Irwin will arrive at the Thunder Bay International Airport at 3:08 p.m. Friday on a Westjet flight.
