Breaking the ice: Rieger joins inaugural Minnesota pro women's hockey team

By JEN SEAVEY

Journal Sports Editor

MINNEAPOLIS -- All her life, Angie Rieger has been on the cutting edge of women's hockey.

As a young girl, she moved up the ranks with the boys in the New Ulm youth hockey leagues; in high school, she traveled with an elite girls hockey team and was on the inaugural New Ulm High School girls team. Now, she is on the first professional women's hockey team in Minnesota.

Just two months ago, the Minnesota Whitecaps was formed as one of the teams in the newly formed Western Women's Hockey League, a breakoff of the NWHL, comprised of Canadian women's teams.

"They've had a league up there for a while," Rieger said. "The Canadians are crazy about hockey."

The Whitecaps had good turnout for their first series in October, considering they had only had a week and a half of practice and people only found out about it by word of mouth. The Whitecaps will have a total of 12 games this season, and the next series is February 25, 26 and 27 against the Calgary Oval X-Treme at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis.

Because the team's staff and players are all volunteers and have other jobs besides hockey, they have had to promote the games themselves and attempt to gain sponsorships, which are sorely needed to be able to play a full schedule of 24 games and get more marketing.

One of the Whitecaps sponsors, "Let's Play Hockey," will be publishing a deal on tickets before the home series in February.

"I'm hoping that some of the New Ulm youth teams can come up and watch," Rieger said, adding that when she was a senior on the Eagles' hockey team, she also coached the U12 girls -- the same girls who are now playing varsity for New Ulm.

Rieger will also be able to promote the team when she is in New Ulm this Sunday when she plays in the 13th annual hockey alumni game at the Civic Center.

"I'm so blessed to have this opportunity," Rieger said. "I'd always wanted to play Division I -- it's like a dream come true."

Many of the women Rieger plays with went to NCAA Div. I colleges, one was on the U.S. Olympic team (Tricia Dunn), two were on the U.S. national team (Winny Brodt and Jeanine Sobek), and one was on the Finnish national team (Satu Kiipeli, also of the University of Minnesota, Duluth).

When the 1997 graduate was a freshman at New Ulm High School, she played Bantam A's with the boys, and at the same time, played on Thoroughbreds, an elite hockey team in the metro area. For two years, she traveled with the Thoroughbreds, a girls team, to the east coast and many other places to find competition.

"We had to travel, because there was nowhere to play here," Rieger said. "We went to nationals and a lot of times out East, because when we played out here, we never lost games."

Her junior year, because the traveling got to be too much in one league and the boys got to be too big in the other, she opted to play basketball. And in 1996, when New Ulm established its girls hockey team, Rieger almost didn't play.

"Sometimes it was kind of frustrating because I was used to winning all the time," Rieger said.

"I almost didn't play, because I saw a basketball coaches' magazine and I was being recruited for Division I basketball. But I'm glad I did it."

When the Eagles' team began, there were only five who had skated, and only two including Rieger who had played hockey.

"It was fun for me to show the girls how to do the basic things," she said. "Some of them are really good friends of mine and are still playing -- it feels good. I just got Kate Anderson into a women's hockey league up here."

The women's hockey league in the metro area is how Rieger became involved with hockey after college. At Augsburg College, Rieger was named three-time All-American and two-time MIAC player of the year, (as well as being a four-time MIAC all-conference selection in volleyball), and afterward, she looked for a way to keep on playing. She had played on the A1 level of the league, the top level, and coach Dwayne Schmidgall told her to try out for the new WWHL team.

Now, she spends her days as a financial analyst, playing league hockey, practicing on weekends, and traveling every month for games in Canada.

Still breaking ground.

Jen Seavey can be reached at jseavey@nujournal.com