Mleczko Returns from Olympic Glory

Two years ago, A.J. Mleczko faced a choice: skip two years of school to train for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics or enter her senior year at Harvard.

Mleczko--whose initials stand for Allison Jaime--took door number one, and now she is back with a gold medal in tow.

Mleczko, 23, is a co-captain of the women's hockey team, and she is already Harvard's career leader in goals and points. Still, she was taking a risk, because a spot on the team was not guaranteed.

"It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life," she says. "That summer, I had no intention of taking time off. I thought, `Yeah, I have just one year to finish up.' I was in such turmoil for a week, and literally the day we registered at Harvard, I went up and I withdrew."

She was one of 54 invitees to a week of games at Lake Placid, and she made the 25-player touring team. The final cut to 20 came December 20, and her plane ticket to Nagano was confirmed.

"In retrospect, it seems like such a silly stress that I had because it was so well worth it," Mleczko says. "I walked with my class at graduation, and I was around the Boston area, so I was around for a lot of senior activities. Now, I get to come back and prolong the college experience."

Everything worked out for Mleczko, who had two assists and two goals in the Olympics. The U.S. team went 6-0, including a 3-1 win over Canada in the finals to win the first-ever women's hockey gold medal.

Mleczko was even a media favorite at the Olympics, or at least Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon's favorite. He described her as "the first left winger I've ever had a crush on."

"I do remember him, and he was always very nice," Mleczko says. "Some people did say we looked more feminine than they expected."

Well, there was one detail--she and four other team members with college eligibility were not allowed to pose for the Wheaties box.

Although she said not being on the box was disappointing, Mleczko said three things about the Games really stood out.

"The opening ceremonies was the point where we thought, `Wow, we've really made it," she says. "That's when I thought I had made my dream--I didn't even think of winning a gold medal."

She also said that the Olympic Village, where all the athletes lived, was incredible. Just being in the dining hall and seeing all the great athletes was memorable, she says--especially when Wayne Gretzky came by to say hi.

"And, of course, there was winning the gold medal," she says. "There were so many of us, we did it right after the game without a podium. We all stood in a line, and they gave us our medals. I've never felt so patriotic in my life. Everybody on our team cried."

Mleczko traveled a long path from her birthplace in Nantucket to center ice at Nagano. She began skating at the rink near her home in New Canaan, Conn., at age two.

"It's pretty incredible to think about it, but my parents would put us out in the middle of the ice, and we'd scream and cry and crawl back, with my mom coaxing us off with hot chocolate," she says. "Eventually we kind of hobbled off on our feet."

Mleczko first became interested in hockey at age five when she watched the team coached by her father, a schoolteacher.

"It wasn't something my parents forced me to do," she says. "It was something I knew I loved, I knew I wanted to devote time to. Winning that gold medal with that team was just spectacular--the emotional high we were on, it was just surreal."

A.J. went by Jaime until fourth grade. She was playing on boys' hockey teams at the time, so she decided to go by her initials because she "saw Jaime as a feminine name."

She says she stayed with hockey for the love of the game although there were few women's hockey players for her to look up to.

"We didn't have female role models," Mleczko says. "I think it's an interesting sensation to know we're giving younger boys and girls role models. It's not just little girls coming up and asking for our autographs, it's boys too."

Mleczko says the Olympics became a dream only in 1992, when she found out that women's hockey would be an Olympic sport.

Now she is preparing for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

"Some people will say, `You've achieved your goal, why eliminate that memory and try again?' but the way I look at it is, it was such an incredible experience, I want it again," she says. "I'm not ready to hang 'em up, and playing in our country is something that really appeals to me. The Japanese women's hockey team is not really strong, but their enthusiasm was incredible because they had such strong support. Just seeing that made me want to play in front of American fans."

Taking the two years off gave Mleczko an added bonus besides preparing her for the Olympics. Now she has a year of eligibility left and can use college games to keep her skills sharp. Training will be more difficult when she doesn't have the college schedule to help her.

For now, however, she is a full-time student, a history concentrator affiliated with Kirkland House but living off-campus. She has to deal with all the typical senior year worries of finding a job, as well as the additional challenge of overcoming a long absence.

"I think the hardest adjustment for me is academic, because for the last two years, I've devoted 100 percent of my time to being a good hockey player," Mleczko says. "Now, I have to balance that with the academic world, with social aspects, all that stuff, and I think that is tougher to adjust to than the removal and the living off campus."

Although she first met her fellow seniors when she was a junior and they were freshmen, says she feels comfortable with her teammates.

The comfort level will be important because, as Mleczko says she witnessed first-hand at Nagano, chemistry will be vital to the team's success. Harvard's roster will have three returning Olympians--Angela Ruggiero (U.S.) and Jennifer Botterill (Canada), as well as Tammy Shewchuk, a late cut from the Canadian Olympic squad.

"We have a lot of talent on the team," Mleczko says. "People say, `Oh wow, you have three Olympians, you'll kill people.' Well, what's overlooked is the talent beyond that."

Because of the influx of Olympians, expectations are high; one preseason poll has the team ranked No. 5 in the nation. Mleczko says one of her challenges as captain will be preventing the expectation from becoming pressure.

She also says she expects to have a different role from when she played two years ago. Then, she was considered a scorer, but the personnel has changed. Now Mleczko says she wants to be a playmaker; defensive center is a role she embraced with the Olympic team.

Being a Harvard women's hockey captain might be in the genes--Mleczko's sister, Wink Mleczko '95, was captain during A.J.'s sophomore year. But this year's squad has the chance to be Harvard's best team ever.

"I think we have a good chance to win the ECAC and even the national championship," she says. "We're definitely contenders."

Mleczko has watched women's hockey grow and improve markedly during her lifetime. International competition began in 1990, and Canada dominated the U.S., winning in '90, '92, 94 and '97. The gap kept closing, however, and in the '97 World Championships, Mleczko's U.S. team took Canada to overtime.

"You could see the gap closing," she says. "We pushed each other to a new level of women's hockey."

Mleczko says she still wants to improve and be a part of the continuing transformation of the sport. She says she will work on her speed and her shooting in particular.

"I want to get a job that is flexible, so if there's a tournament, I can leave for a week, and maybe that means working for a hockey-related organization, whether another team or a manufacturer," she says.

She says she is interested in following in her father's footsteps as a teacher and coach as a long-term goal.

Mleczko does not emphasize this aspect of the Olympics as much, but during U.S. Olympic Committee processing, she got a lot of free clothes: jeans, hats, t-shirts, and jackets.

"They tell you to go over to Japan for a month with basically personal items, and that's it," she says. "It's unbelievable how much stuff you get from the sponsors."

Loot and a gold medal? What a deal. After two years off, Mleczko is back, ready to finish off the greatest career in Harvard women's hockey history. The Crimson's opponents may be left wishing she had taken door number two.