U.S. national team gathers, focuses on gold.(The Gazette)

Angela Ruggiero will miss two years of college, at Harvard no less. A.J. Mleczko sees her husband twice a month. Julie Chu left prep school weeks after being chosen student council president. Natalie Darwitz is finishing high school via the Internet.

Every one of the women who make up the U.S. national hockey team has a story like that, a tale of dedication and sacrifice, of something major given up to train together for two solid years for next year's Olympics.

"We're the only team doing this," said Ruggiero. "We're kind of setting the standard for international teams right now."

They are also setting the standard for each other. A year of togetherness produced a close-knit team that won the inaugural women's hockey gold medal in the `98 Olympics. So they're doing it again to prepare for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

This week, they get a test to see how well it's going, at the world championships in Minneapolis. Competition begins Monday with preliminary games and ends with the gold-medal game next Sunday at Mariucci Arena.

It's an Olympics preview, a major tournament in the United States, with the Canadian team standing in the way of the big prize.

The Canadians once held the edge in preparedness. Canadian women have a semi-professional league to play in, a place to hone their games after college. U.S. players had few postgraduate options, except for a few national team training camps.