Ringette to Hockey in Ten Easy Steps

An "Alberta Clipper" is a storm system which usually brings arctic winds to New England, leaving its denizens chilled to the bone.

Call Brita Lind the "Regina Clipper." Her usual trademark is to fly past defensemen with the ferocity of an arctic breeze, leaving opposing goalies helpless.

Helpless enough to make the Regina, Saskatchewan native the top scorer on the Harvard women's hockey team with 11 goals and 13 assists for 24 points.

While the junior is enjoying great success at Harvard now, she began her hockey career at a very early age.

Lind was born in Calgary, Alberta, but her family moved to Regina when she was three. Even then she was learning to skate.

"My parents would take us out on the lake," Lind says. "You wouldn't technically be [skating] the whole time; you'd fall down."

Lind followed the lead of her brothers in playing hockey until she joined a community league.

"I was the only girl of 300 in the league, and when I first started I had my hair cut short just like all the guys so the coach didn't know I was a girl for the first three weeks," says Lind. "But then when he saw I could skate and everything it was too late for him to do anything about it."

But in grade school, Lind chose to drop hockey and play ringette, a derivative of hockey predominatly played by school-age Canadian girls.

In ringette, players use bladeless sticks to shoot a 6-in. soft rubber ring into a regulation hockey goal. There is no offside rule in effect, but there are restrictions on the movements of the players. The defensemen and forwards cannot cross their side of the center-ice red line. But the center is allowed to go into both halves of the rink, so she must be able to defend the other center and also beat the other center into the offensive zone. The speedy Lind, not surprisingly, played center.

When it came time for Lind to choose colleges, she was initially going to apply to a pair of Canadian schools, Queen's College in Ontario and the University of British Columbia. But her brother Howie--then at Harvard Business School--told Lind about the women's hockey team at Harvard.

So Lind applied, took her SAT tests, and got accepted.

"I was definitely excited about it," Lind says. "My dad just asked how much it cost."

Coming to Harvard meant having to pack a regular hockey stick and a puck in her luggage for the first time since fourth grade.

"I was a little bit afraid of changing to hockey after all those years," Lind says. "I just figured that if you can skate you can do anything."

And Lind has been proving for the past three years that she can do almost anything she wants to on ice. The 5-ft., 2-in. Canadian has brought great speed and a good wrist shot from her ringette days.

"It was really hard to raise the ring because of the friction of the ice and you really have to have good technique in order to have that wrist shot," says Lind.

The opposition has had to worry about Lind's blazing speed and devastating wrist shot ever since she stepped onto the Harvard ice. She was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year for the 1985-86 campaign. But other teams also have to worry about her outstanding corner play.

"Brita is the best corner player in women's hockey, and that's saying something," says Harvard Coach John Dooley. "When she goes into a corner for the puck, 99 times out of 100 she'll come up with it."

"She's probably one of the strongest players on the team," says Harvard co-captain Johanna Neilson. "She doesn't give up easily."

What is the Leverett House resident's secret to winning loose pucks in the corner? "I think its just a mindset," Lind says. "I have the right to the puck just as much as anyone else. I go in and I don't think of the possibility of not coming up with it. Nothing can happen if we don't have the puck."

Lind's deadly combination of speed and skill really shined in overtime against Princeton two weeks ago. Lind chased down a puck from 180 feet away, split two defenders, and fed the puck to linemate Julie Sasner for a heart-stopping goal.

"It was worth the look on the defensemen's faces when I was passing them," Lind says. "What gives you energy is thinking that you have a chance to win, and that's probably where I got that spurt from."

Beating Princeton is one thing. It's beating an Eastern powerhouse like UNH, Northeastern or Providence that would be the junior's greatest collegiate thrill.

"It would really give a boost to our entire program, and I would be psyched for the entire year," Lind says. "We can skate with [the top teams] for two periods, and if we get that third period we'll be set."

The honors Sociology major is not only good with a ringette or hockey stick. She also wields a pretty good softball bat.

"It's not my big sport; it's my offseason sport," Lind says about softball. "I like it and it's fun. And there's a lot of good people on the team."

Lind has two alternate futures. One involves going back to Canada to work or to attend law school.

The other might involve a little trip to a village in France called Albertville.

"I'd like to play in the Olympics," Lind says. "I think they're going to have experimental [women's ice hockey] in '92."

And if they do, watch out. France will probably never see anything like the Regina Clipper again.