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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Punahou alum skilled on skates

By Dennis Anderson
Advertiser Staff Writer

What seems less likely than a student-athlete from Honolulu playing collegiate ice hockey?

Linda Desruisseaux overcame a debilitating illness in her senior year at Punahou to make the women's ice hockey team at Northeastern University in Boston.

Photo courtesy of Desruisseaux family

How about a female ice hockey player from Honolulu?

Her name is Linda Desruisseaux (pronounce it Da Roo So) and she plays on the women's varsity at Northeastern University in Boston. She scored her first goal last week, against Boston University in the locally famous Beanpot tournament.

Desruisseaux is a 2001 Punahou School graduate from Manoa, but she learned to play hockey in New Jersey, where she was born and lived until 1998.

Moving to the land of surf and sand did not erode her passion for the game. She was the only girl who played among the young men in the Ice Palace's youth leagues.

"I love to skate, to just be out on the ice, and the speed of the game," says Desruisseaux.

During her senior year at Punahou, she flew to the Mainland four times to play for the Anaheim Lady Ducks amateur team. "Once I flew to Minnesota for a weekend tournament and back to Honolulu for classes on Monday. That was tough," Desruisseaux said.

She has gone to girls hockey camps every summer and last year she lived a long-held dream by playing at Phillips Exeter Academy prep school in New Hampshire. She also ran track at Punahou and Phillips Exeter, and anchored the New England Prep School champion 4x100 relay team.

In hockey, her size — 5 feet 3 and 115 pounds — "is a challenge," she says. "I have always been the smallest or one of the smallest" players on the ice. She has teammates at Northeastern who are 5 feet 11 and 185 pounds; one is on the U.S. national team.

Desruisseaux says there is supposed to be no checking in women's hockey, "but it's kind of not."

While the women's game has hard knocks, "girls hockey is a lot more about team play," Desruisseaux says. "There is no enforcer line like in boys hockey."

Joy Woog, the women's coach at Northeastern, says the more impressive story about Desruisseaux is that she is playing competitive sports at all.

In her senior year at Punahou, Desruisseaux was stricken with viral pericarditis, a heart condition so severe that "she couldn't walk up four stairs," Woog said. "Now she's playing Division I college hockey, clearly a challenging sport. Now that's a great story."

Desruisseaux is proud that she fought off the illness, which struck a week before she was scheduled to try out for a national team development camp, in time to go to her senior prom.

From that experience, she found her professional goal — emergency room nursing.

Her injuries from this fierce game have been "just little stuff," Desruisseaux says. "I broke my wrist in the eighth grade when I was hit with a puck, and I fractured a bone in my foot.

"They told me my chances of making the team at Northeastern were slim to none," she said. "I was the only walk-on to make it."

"She showed up at the door in great shape, tip-top, and made the team," coach Woog said. "She has the motivation. She is a great part of our team."