CALGARY – She's among the greatest female hockey players in history. After an already legendary career, Hayley Wickenheiser is going back to school.

University of Calgary women's hockey coach Danielle Goyette announced Thursday that the 32-year-old Wickenheiser will join the Dinos for their 2010-11 Canadian Interuniversity Sport season.



She will make her Canada West debut in a two-game series Oct. 8-9 at Regina. The Dinos open at home one week later, hosting Lethbridge Oct. 15 in the front end of a home-and-home series.

“This is a big day for CIS women's hockey,” said Goyette, who enters her fourth season as head coach of the Dinos. “The best player in the world is joining the league, and that's only going to make the league better. She will show how hard you have to work to be one of the best players in the world and if she can bring that to our team every day, I think our players will end up being better just by her being there.”

“I talked a lot with Danielle over the course of the last year and the summer about different options in the game and probably the number one factor for me coming to play for the Dinos was that she was the coach,” Wickenheiser said Thursday. “We've played together for so many years and I knew her as an athlete and just her preparation level. So I knew I would be coming to a program that was professional where we're on the ice every day.”

Since joining the senior national team at the age of 15, the Shaunavon, Sask. native has led Canada to six world championships and three Olympic gold medals, most recently in Vancouver last February. She was the Olympic MVP in both 2002 and 2006.

She made worldwide headlines in 2003 when she joined HC Salamat in the Finnish third division, becoming the first woman to score in a men's professional league. Her professional career also included a brief stop in the Swedish third division.

She joins a Dinos program that will certainly be familiar. Goyette was her teammate through three Olympic Games, while assistant coach Kelly Bechard is also an Olympic champion. And the Dinos play out of the Olympic Oval, where Wickenheiser played with the Oval X-Treme of the Western Women's Hockey League.

Canada's all-time leading international scorer, Wickenheiser has enrolled in the Faculty of Kinesiology. She spent the 1996-97 and 1998-99 academic years as a full-time student at the University of Calgary, then spent one semester at Simon Fraser University in early 2000. She has completed approximately half of the coursework necessary to earn a Bachelor of Kinesiology degree.

“It's going to be different, 10 years away from school, but finishing the degree is something I have always wanted to do,” Wickenheiser said. “It will be a challenging year though, I haven't been in school for so long.

“I guess I am going to learn all about university life again. It will be fun.”

“When I first talked to her, my main goal was to get her to go back to school,” said Goyette. “I know a lot of players wait too long and then it becomes difficult to go back. From a hockey perspective, we don't have the X-Treme anymore and she wanted to stay in Calgary, and we have the opportunity to work one-on-one in some extra training sessions.”

Having never played for a post-secondary institution, Wickenheiser joins the Dinos in her first season of CIS eligibility. Under CIS rules, there are no designated professional leagues in women's ice hockey.

The Dinos finished 7-15-2 in the Canada West regular season last year, their inaugural season back in CIS after a seven-year stint in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference.

In addition to Wickenheiser, Goyette's recruiting class includes former X-Treme goaltender Amanda Tapp, netminder Kiersten Gisebrecht, and forwards Jenna Smith, Chelsea Peterson, Erika Mitschke, and Kira Sonnenberg.

Wickenheiser has practised with the team for the past several weeks.

“At the beginning, they were a little nervous,” said Goyette. “They grew up watching her on TV and she's been an idol for so many of the girls, so they kind of don't know how to react yet. But when she starts being with the team every day it will start becoming more natural to have her around, and it will be exciting for the players to be with her every day.”

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