Angela Ruggiero was a defenseman who played high school hockey at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut, playing on the 1998 Olympic team while a student there, and college hockey at Harvard University, where she won the 2004 Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in women’s college hockey. In 2004, Ruggiero graduated from Harvard cum laude with a degree in government. During her college career, she scored 79 goals and 214 points, the latter a record for a college defenseman, male or female. At the 2005 World Championships, in a shoot-out, Ruggiero scored the goal that won the title for the US over Canada, the first time the United States had won a World Championships. Ruggiero has also skated for the Minnesota Whitecaps of the Women’s Western Hockey League.
In 2005 Ruggiero played for the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League in one game against the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees, becoming the first woman to play in a men’s professional league at a position other than goaltender. Her brother, Bill Ruggiero, was the goaltender for Tulsa and they became the first brother-sister combination to play professional hockey.
At the 2002 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony, Ruggiero was one of the eight athletes chosen to carry in the flag from the World Trade Center from 9/11. In 2007 Ruggiero was also chosen to be a contestant on the US business-themed reality show, “The Apprentice,” starring Donald Trump. She was voted off the show after the 10th episode, but was offered a job by Trump in his organization. Ruggiero declined, as she is studying for a masters’ degree in sports management at the University of Minnesota, and still training with the US Team in an attempt to make the 2010 Winter Olympics, which would be her fourth.
United States