MILAN – Every two years, those tasked with selling, growing and protecting the Olympic Games, from International Olympic Committee members to local politicians and organizers, preach about the unifying power of the Games with evangelical zeal and conviction.
Kelly Pannek, the pride of Plymouth, Minn., and a proud former University of Minnesota Golden Gopher, hopes the United States women’s hockey team’s performance in the Milano Cortina Olympic Games will lift the spirits of the residents of Minneapolis. Or maybe Team USA can at least distract them from a series of tragedies that have rocked the community and placed it at the center of a global spotlight and a national debate over free speech and the Trump administration’s deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to American cities.
So when the U.S. took the ice for its Olympic Games opener against Czechia on Thursday afternoon, Pannek’s head was in the game, but her heart was definitely also back home in Minnesota…