Angela Ruggiero

TSN- After sweeping their opponents throughout the tournament, the U.S. Women's Ice Hockey Team earned silver as they were edged out by Canada in the championship game at the 2009 Women's Four Nations Cup, Nov. 3-7 in Tikkurila, Finland. The event featured the top four women's hockey teams in the world - the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden - and is the last international women's hockey tournament prior to the start of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The U.S. team opened preliminary-round play with a 4-0 win over Finland and added two additional tournament wins after defeating both Sweden and Canada 3- 2.   The U.S. Women’s team beat Canada to win the gold medal at the 2009 World Championships earlier this year. (read more)

Los Angeles Times

Like most athletes as they age, three-time U.S. Olympic hockey medalist Angela Ruggiero of Simi Valley realized that her 29-year-old body wasn’t rebounding as quickly as it used to after games and workouts.

Intent on helping Team USA return to gold-medal glory in February at the Vancouver Games, she worked out with male hockey players this summer at the Athletes Performance training facility at the Home Depot Center in Carson. She emerged leaner and stronger—and believes she might have added 10 years to her playing career.

Ruggiero spent May, June, July and part of August at Athletes Performance as the only woman in a training group that included Chris Drury of the New York Rangers, George Parros of the Ducks, Richard Park of the New York Islanders, former King Noah Clarke, and other pro players.

 “For me it was really cool,” she said from Spokane, Wash., where the U.S. women’s national team will faced Canada in a game televised by the NHL Network. (read more)

U.S. National Hockey Team member Angela Ruggiero was nominated for the Jefferson Award for Public Service. The three-time Olympian (1998, 2002, 2006) joins 52 other athletes as nominees for the national recognition system honoring community and public service in America.

Fans can VOTE for Angela by text messaging STAR36 to 55333, or online by clicking here. Voting ends Nov. 15. Visit Angela Ruggiero's page at AllStarsHelpingKids.org

Ruggiero began her community involvement at an early age, helping to launch the Angela Ruggiero Girls' Hockey School and serving as a spokesperson for the Women's Sports Foundation. She has reached out to the international community as well, serving as the director of the New York Islanders' Project Hope, which provides educational opportunities to young Chinese athletes. In addition, Ruggiero spent six weeks in Uganda as a mentor with Right to Play, which uses sport and play to enrich the lives of disadvantaged kids around the world.

Ruggiero will also be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame on Dec. 1 as a member of the gold medal-winning 1998 U.S. Olympic Women's Ice Hockey Team. (read more)

Angela Ruggiero will speak as a panelist at tonight’s 2009 Distinguished Lecture at the University of Minnesota, Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport.

Facing Off Over Facebook: The Impact of Social Media on Women’s Sports

Monday, October 19,  7:00-9:00 PM • Hubert H. Humphrey Center

About the Panel: Over the past 30 years, scholars have documented numerous ways in which traditional sport media marginalize and sexualize female athletes. Into this vast—and influential—media landscape appears the recent and exponential explosion of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Will this technological paradigm shift challenge or reproduce the ways in which female athletes are traditionally portrayed in mainstream sport media? Will the unprecedented popularity of social media—and the alternative “ways of knowing” it provides to traditional media—fundamentally alter how we view women’s sports? Panelists with diverse experiences and perspectives will “face off” and take on these important and largely unexplored questions as we move into the Age of New Media.

About the Panelists:

Angela Ruggiero: One of the most accomplished women’s hockey players in the world, Ruggiero is a three-time Olympic medalist and World Champion, leader of the 2010 U.S. Women’s Hockey National Team, record holder for most games played for Team USA, and Hockey Hall of Fame inductee. Ruggiero graduated cum laude with a degree in govern­ment from Harvard University, where she was an NCAA First-Team Academic All-Ameri­can. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Sports Management at the Universi­ty of Minnesota. Ruggiero uses multiple social media platforms to promote her individual career as well as women’s hockey. (read more)

Seventeen Magazine

We asked some of Nike’s athletes, including Angela Ruggiero, what three things inspire or keep them motivated while training.

 “The Olympic Rings: When I’m training and doing the last set of the day, when my heart is pounding or when I can feel the burn in my muscles, I think of my goal – winning the Olympics. It’s important to have a goal in the back of your mind to keep you motivated. The rings do that for me."

“A smile: When I’m training and feeling the pain, I always remind myself that I’m exactly where I want to be; enjoying myself doing the sport I love. Even when it hurts, I try to smile and remember that I’m so lucky to be where I am and that training and ultimately competition, is fun!"

“Music: There’s nothing like putting on my headphones and hearing a good beat to get me fired up! Music can actually give me the chills, increase my adrenaline, and get me pumped to push hard through training. It inspires me to work even harder.”

-- Angela Ruggiero (read more)