Sports
Salvian: There’s no world juniors for women. What would it take to make it happen?
The top under-20 men’s players from Czechia, Finland, Sweden and the United States will vie for a spot in the gold medal game during the semifinals of the 2024 World Junior Championship on Thursday.
The best women in that age group won’t have the chance. They never have.
Since 1977 the IIHF has sanctioned a men’s world juniors. The world’s best female hockey players compete in annual under-18 and senior national championships, tournaments which began years after their male counterparts. And even though the women’s game is rapidly growing — look no further than what will be a multi-million dollar investment into the professional game with the PWHL — there is still no women’s world juniors.
That’s something Team Canada and Team USA general managers Gina Kingsbury and Katie Million want to change.
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“The U20 group is the missing piece,” Million said in an interview with The Athletic. “It’s been (our) dream to make this happen.”
There have been discussions with the IIHF about a potential women’s world juniors within the last year, Million said, but in recent committee meetings the idea has been voted down largely because other nations outside the U.S. and Canada aren’t ready to add another team to their women’s programming.
It’s true that Canada and the U.S. have dominated at the under-18 level, just as their senior teams have — no other nation has won a U18 gold medal since the tournament started in 2008. But there has been noticeable growth. Last year, Sweden beat Team USA in the semifinals and won a second silver medal after making it to the gold medal game for the first time in 2018. And it was Nela Lopušanová, a 14-year-old from Slovakia, who was the star of the 2023 tournament.
Lopušanová might be the most obvious example of growth in international women’s hockey. If the IIHF had decided women’s hockey wasn’t ready for a U18 tournament all those years ago, Lopušanová probably wouldn’t have become one of the most exciting young players to watch right now.
“We have to start somewhere,” Million said.
The main critique of all levels of women’s international hockey has typically been that Canada and the U.S. are going to win everything, so what’s the point? It’s a stale argument.
Because what’s also true is that two countries have dominated the men’s world juniors over its nearly 50-year history. Canada and Russia, or formerly the Soviet Union and CIS teams, have won 33 of the 47 gold medals since the tournament officially began. Canada, with 20, has won nearly half of the possible championships and only missed the podium a 13 times. Only six teams have ever won over five decades of competition.
Since 2013, only Canada (5), Finland (3), and the U.S. (3) have won gold.
If you’re OK with two or three teams dominating a men’s tournament, why is it a problem when it happens with women?
Team Canada has been dominant at the world juniors — their early exit at this year’s tournament notwithstanding — and this has become entwined with national pride and making hockey “Canada’s Game.” Why do we celebrate this, and then use Canadian women’s dominance as a reason to not play?
It’s entirely possible, even with two teams at the top, to grow interest in a niche product. That’s what the men’s world juniors was before TSN bought the rights in 1991. Now it’s must-see TV, particularly in Canada because of the team’s dominance and TSN’s investment.
“It’s a spectacle here in Canada,” said Canadian Olympian Sarah Nurse. “And I think that speaks to TSN, the media and how they’ve been able to spin a tournament into this Canadian tradition. I think we can do the same thing with women’s events.”
Claire Thompson never made a U18 national team before playing for Princeton, where she was noticed by Team Canada scouts only because they had gone to watch Sarah Fillier play. (Dan Hamilton / USA Today)
With the right partners, and money, of course.
But besides all that, a women’s world juniors would be vital for the overall health of women’s hockey and would provide a critical — and missing — opportunity for development.
Under-18 or -19 female hockey players, for the most part, are well served. There are club team championships and U18 nationals in Canada. USA Hockey has national championships for 19U girls. And, of course, there’s the IIHF under-18 world championships.
But very few players in North America can jump from U18s or high school hockey right to the senior women’s national team — Marie-Philip Poulin, who went from U18 worlds to senior worlds in 2008-09, is one of the few to have done it — which creates a large gap in opportunity for the top players in the sport. Team USA and Canada have played an under-22 series since 1999 — it’s now called the collegiate series — but that’s typically only three games played in August.
“Those kids that are on a U18 team, we don’t see them again until they’re maybe junior, senior in college or post-grad,” Million explained. “It only helps our development of those players to have that touch point when they’re younger and keep them in our culture and playing our systems.”
An under-20 team would expose decision-makers in the game to a potentially different set of players at a critical point in their careers, or provide more touch points for the development of stars from their under-18 years. Players are different at 19 years old than they are at 17 — some take off, others might go the other way — but there is no perfect way for national teams to track that progress other than scouting college teams.
“There is almost this forgotten group of players,” said Nurse. “You see girls at 16, 17, 18 years old and send them off to college. And they have to hope that our GM or scouts are at games at the right times and are talking to the right people.”
Take Claire Thompson as a recent example. The Canadian defender did not make an under-18 national team before heading off to Princeton in 2016 and was only spotted by Team Canada scouts who were sent to watch her teammate Sarah Fillier. Thompson was quickly invited to the under-22 team and went on to set a record at the 2022 Olympics for points by a defender.
“Imagine a player like that slipping through the cracks,” said Nurse.
It would also provide the opportunity for players who are too old for U18s and just outside the senior team to continue to play important games.
At 19 years old, Laila Edwards has already made history as the first Black woman to play for Team USA and is expected to become one of the faces of the game — in due time. She should be squarely in the mix to make the 2024 world championship roster, but if she’s not quite ready she won’t have any national team opportunities until USA Hockey’s annual August training camp. And then she wouldn’t play in international competition until the 2025 worlds, should she make that roster.
Of course someone like Edwards can continue to develop in college, but it would only aid her development to get into competitive international games.
Player development is not just about Team Canada and Team USA anymore, either. Not with the first-ever PWHL season officially underway. Men’s world juniors offers not just one of the most prestigious stages for young hockey players, but an opportunity to significantly boost their draft stock heading into the NHL Draft.
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Let’s consider TSN for a moment again. The network promotes the world juniors as an opportunity to watch the future legends of the game before they become legends. One promo for the 2023 world juniors said, “Before they were household names they were here on TSN.”
Women’s hockey players should be afforded the same opportunity, to not just grow as players, but to announce themselves on a big stage. Fans, too, deserve to know who to watch for, or who to hope their favorite team drafts in the first round of the PWHL Draft.
So, what next? And what could this look like?
At first, it could be as simple as Canada and the U.S. expanding their national team offerings. Each summer, Canada’s U18 and Collegiate teams face off in a mini-series. Maybe they could add an under-20 — next generation — rivalry series to the mix.
Or maybe, instead of a 10-team tournament like the men’s world juniors, it’s a smaller number of teams like a Four Nations tournament, but for the under-20 age group. Maybe it’s a World Cup-style tournament with teams from Canada, the United States and Europe. The latter option would allow top players — like Lopušanová — from countries that might not have enough U20 players for a full roster to be in the mix.
What a women’s world junior offering might look like remains to be seen. The timing is even more challenging to predict.
Hopefully these decisions are made soon, though. Because every year that goes by is another missed opportunity to grow the game.
(Photo: Dennis Pajot / Getty Images)
Tom Marchitelli worked as an accountant for a hedge fund for eight years before setting up a side hustle that soon became his full-time business.
Marchitelli started a custom menswear clothing business called Gentleman’s Playbook a decade ago. Since then, he has accrued approximately 500 clients, the majority of whom are professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, and on the PGA Tour.
When The Athletic spoke with Marchitelli, he was heading to an airport in Dallas after a meeting with a baseball player.
In his role as personal designer, stylist and tailor, Marchitelli handpicks entire wardrobes for a clientele which includes Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. During the different pre-seasons across the United States’ various leagues, Marchitelli is rarely in one city for long. As well as working on a lookbook of outfits for specific events, the majority of his work centres around personalising entire collections of tunnel fits for the athletes he works with.
“Tunnel fits” is the phrase used to describe what sportsmen and women wear when they turn up at venues for games (‘fits’ being short for ‘outfits’).
Usually, athletes arrive in the tunnel beneath the arena wearing their best outfits, which is where the name derives from. Think of it as a pre-game runway, where players across sports in North America showcase their personalities through what they wear.
The most fashion-conscious athletes, such as Houston Texans’ Stefon Diggs or Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, will go big, but others prefer to keep it simple.
Stefon Diggs arrives for an NFL game in January this year (Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
Kyle Kuzma was in the former camp, and is now the latter. The Washington Wizards forward recently announced his ‘retirement’ from the tunnel walk after taking the game to heights with choices including an incredibly oversized pink Raf Simons jumper and a black Rick Owens puffer jacket.
“I don’t want to be a part of that type of community where you have to put on a ’fit. I’m really taking a backseat to all of that,” Kuzma told Vogue in October.
While Kuzma has checked out and traded in a palate of high fashion for plain-tasting sweatsuits, in Europe, footballers are only just checking into the world of tunnel fits.
“It is a sport within sports (in the U.S.),” Marchitelli says. “Social media plays a huge role, because all major sports teams have media people who are in charge of photographing the players as they enter.
“That’s only been around, I would say maybe eight years, because when I first started, that (posting images of players arriving to games on social media) wasn’t a thing. And then it started becoming so visible.
Kyle Kuzma, pictured in 2022 (left) and 2021, has ‘retired’ from deliberate tunnel fits (Getty Images)
“You’re getting a close and personal look at what athletes look like when they’re not in their uniforms (team kit), and how they are choosing to express themselves. And, over time, players have taken more pride in how they show up for work.
“Another big factor that drives it is competition among players. These guys are trying to outdress guys on their team, guys on other teams across their sport, and even crossing over into other sports.
“When they show up to the arena, they’re given the uniform that they’re forced to wear, so they don’t have any real choices of self-expression other than their shoes, cleats (boots), maybe a wristband accessory or a headband. But the outfit that they wear to show up to the game, they’re able to express how they feel and how they want to look.”
Marchitelli could field a team in each men’s major sports league with the number of clients he has, but not a single one is a professional footballer despite MLS and NWSL teams having both dabbled in this subcultural movement.
In European football, tunnel fits are almost nonexistent. France international Jules Kounde led the way for Barcelona in recent seasons with his ensembled looks which blend vintage finds with high fashion. This season though, Barca players are no longer been allowed to arrive for games in their own clothes. This has led Kounde, a face now as recognisable in fashion quarters as much as football, capturing his fits to share with his followers on social media after matches instead.
Most teams have a strict club-tracksuits-only policy applied to matchday and this is one of the main reasons why pre-game tunnel fits have not yet taken off in football.
So where is the individuality? The answer to that does not yet reside in the underbelly of stadiums but in the car parks of the sport’s training grounds. Heading into training for your club or national team has slowly evolved into a time when players across the men’s and women’s games can showcase their style in the form of arrival fits.
Showing up for international duty, in particular, has become a moment for players to demonstrate their fashion prowess.
Last month, Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konate arrived at France’s training ground wearing a neon green hood zipped over his face while his international team-mate Marcus Thuram, often bedecked in Balenciaga and Chrome Hearts, is among those also paving the way.
Konate arrives for international duty with France in October (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
Players of Argentina, Belgium and Portugal are three other standouts who consistently show up. Meanwhile, England — whose players include Louis Vuitton brand ambassador Jude Bellingham — are still strutting around in team-supplied Nike tracksuits, proving the trend has not completely caught fire everywhere.
“It was probably 2022 when that (arrival fits) wave really began,” Jordan Clarke, founder of Footballer Fits, a platform which celebrates footballer fashion, says.
Clarke noticed that Premier League team Crystal Palace had started putting pictures on Instagram of their players arriving at their south London training ground wearing their own clothes. After starting a conversation with the club, Footballer Fits and Palace have been collaborating on Instagram posts to showcase what players are wearing ever since.
“Now we’ve done it with Chelsea, Nottingham Forest, Anderlecht in Belgium, we’ve done it with Brentford a lot, we’ve done it with Crystal Palace Women, Chelsea Women — there are so many,” says Clarke, who hopes that arrival fits are a precursor to tunnel fits becoming a regular sight in football.
“I don’t want to leave anyone out, but we’ve done it with so many clubs and now you’re seeing Liverpool, Newcastle United and Manchester City maybe not doing it in collaboration with us, but they’re doing it (themselves) now, and that’s amazing to see.
“With training, there is a lot less pressure. They (clubs) can release photos midweek and whatever happens on the weekend, unless you’re a super-negative person, I don’t think people are going to link back to what the players wore to training as the reason why they lost.”
Siobhan Wilson is one of the players who has featured on Footballer Fits’ Instagram page in collaboration with her club, Birmingham City Women, and she would welcome an escape from the traditional pre-match tracksuit.
“It actually annoys me, you know — especially when you see what they are doing in the WNBA,” says the 30-year-old Jamaica international with a laugh. “I wish we did stuff like that here. They just want us to all look like clones of each other, but it’s fine.”
Wilson used to deliver mail while playing part-time for Palace. She now combines a full-time playing career at Birmingham, who are top of the second-tier Championship, with being a fitness influencer to 1.3million followers on TikTok.
“It’s nice for the fans to see players express themselves through what they’re wearing and their style,” she says. “You get to see people’s personalities by doing that, so it would be something that I would love to see more of.
“For me, I feel like if you’ve got like a nice ’fit on, and a good pair of shoes on, you just feel good. But I get the other side (players arriving in uniform tracksuits) too. It is a team game. You’re there to play as a team, so I get it from that standpoint, but wearing your own clothes and feeling comfortable in what you’re wearing: it allows you to be yourself a bit more.”
Martin Odegaard and Arsenal arriving in team gear to play Chelsea this month (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Algen Hamilton is a designer and stylist from south London.
His break in the fashion industry arrived when he started styling looks for footballer friend Reiss Nelson, the Fulham winger (on loan from Arsenal) who he met at primary school aged four. Hamilton’s client list includes Trevoh Chalobah (Crystal Palace, on loan from Chelsea), Kai Havertz (Arsenal), Joe Willock (Newcastle), Ben Chilwell (Chelsea) and Mateo Kovacic (Manchester City).
“I’ll work with them constantly throughout the season, whenever they want to — when they have an event coming up or they have an awards ceremony or they’re going to a premiere,” Hamilton, 24, explains. “When it comes to arrival fits, those looks normally come from the wardrobe I create and I’ll update it multiple times in a year.
“I speak to them first about what they want to wear and what the vibe is that we are going for, if it’s different to before, where they are travelling to et cetera. Then I’ll go off, make the outfits and send them a message. They will tell me which outfits they love.
“So, for example, I’m working with Trevoh right now. We made a whole bunch of outfits, which he picked, and then there are brands who want to gift some stuff for winter.”
Amadou Onana, left, checks in for Belgium duty in 2023 (Nico Vereecken/Photo News via Getty Images)
Having worked with Chalobah on a full-time basis since 2021, Hamilton has watched the progression of football and fashion’s relationship firsthand.
“When I first started, players weren’t really going out there dressing up like they do now, and it wasn’t just the Premier League — we are talking La Liga (its Spanish equivalent) and the Bundesliga (the top division in Germany),” he says.
“Also, brands weren’t really opening up partnerships to football players either. As time has gone by, the popularity has grown and supporters are tapping into the player outside of the training ground and off the pitch. I feel like now, those opportunities are happening more. Players are more open with their fits and want to show them off.
“We have watched the game change bit by bit and it is only a matter of time for it to get to that stage where it’s like the sports are in America. But let’s not mix a step forward with progress, because it can be a step forward seeing teams do that (post-arrival fits on social media) but it doesn’t mean it’s actual progression for the teams to change their minds.
“The Premier League is very traditional. They’ll probably be the last league that will change how things are.
“It would be nice for the progress to be meaningful; for it (wearing an arrival outfit) not to be looked at as a distraction or as a moment where players aren’t focused on what the team objectives are, but to see it as an opportunity where players are expressing themselves.”
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(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Kelsea Peterson)
Jason Kelce is expanding his media resume.
The future Hall of Famer, who is a podcast host and “Monday Night Football” analyst, announced Thursday he will host a late-night show on ESPN.
Kelce made the announcement during an appearance with Jimmy Kimmel, a future rival.
Jason Kelce says being a father is one of the highlights of his life. (Andy Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“I loved late-night shows. I’ve always loved them. I remember sleepovers watching Conan O’Brien with my friends,” Kelce said on Kimmel’s show. “We’re going to have a bunch of guys up there — legends of the game, friends that I played with, coaches, celebrities.”
The first four episodes of “They Call It Late Night With Jason Kelce” will be broadcast in front of a live audience at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, where Kelce played all 13 of his NFL seasons with the Eagles.
Jason Kelce waves to fans at the 18th hole at the 2024 American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course July 14, 2024, in Stateline, Nev. (Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)
The first episode will be taped the evening of Jan. 3 and will be broadcast the following morning at 1 a.m. ET. ESPN will record four more shows, and the final broadcast is scheduled for Feb. 1.
Kelce and his younger brother, Travis, launched a podcast, “New Heights,” in 2022, a few months before facing each other in the Super Bowl.
After Travis won that Super Bowl, he hosted “Saturday Night Live,” and Jason made an appearance. Travis is also the host of the show “Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity?”
Jason Kelce poses for a photo with Kylie Kelce during the “Kelce” documentary premiere at Suzanne Roberts Theatre Sept. 8, 2023, in Philadelphia. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)
Kelce’s wife, Kylie, announced Friday she is pregnant with the couple’s fourth daughter. In his career, he made seven Pro Bowls and was a six-time first-team All-Pro selection.
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On a cool Saturday morning at Pierce College, Ananya Balaraman of North Hollywood High did something she has been dreaming about for years. She won the City Section Division I girls’ cross-country title with a personal best time of 17 minutes, 38 seconds.
The straight-A student who attends North Hollywood’s Highly Gifted Magnet finished sixth in last year’s race in 19:18. She credits her improvement to increasing her mileage workouts.
Granada Hills won the Division I girls’ title.
Paul Tranquilla of Venice won the City Section DI boys’ race with a school-record time of 14:44.60.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
In the boys’ race, Paul Tranquilla of Venice raced to the Division I title with a time of 14:44.60. Last week he ran a personal best of 15:03 at the preliminaries, so he put together back-to-back weeks reaching peak form. He set a school record and was the 800 City champion in track.
Palisades won the boys’ Division I team title.
It was a big day for the Montenegro family. Jorge helped Monroe win the Division II boys’ title and his sister, Trinidad, was a member of Granada Hills’ Division I championship team.
Griffin Kushen breaks record
Griffin Kushen of Tesoro, a recent Duke signee, had a memorable Saturday morning at the Southern Section championships at Mt. San Antonio College. He set a Mt. SAC course record with a time of 14:38.5 in Division 2. Glendora won the team title.
Beckman won the Division 1 boys’ team title. Maximo Zavaleta of King took first in 15:00.8.
Trabuco Hills won the Division 1 girls’ team title behind Holly Barker, who ran 16:40.7 to take the individual title.
In Division 2 girls, Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura won in 17:31.9. El Toro captured the team title.
The top teams and individuals advance to the state championships at Woodward Park in Fresno on Nov. 30.
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