World Champion.              NCAA Champion.              Olympic Medalist.

 

The life of Meghan Duggan has seen her ups and downs at the greatest of levels. Growing up in a suburb of Boston, in Danvers, Massachusetts, she played soccer, softball and lacrosse, but hockey was her true passion that she really excelled at. During high school at Cushing Academy she was a three-year recipient of the Bette Davis Award as the prep school’s top female athlete for play in all of these sports.

 

Hockey though led her to the University of Wisconsin (in 2006-07) on scholarship and over her career here, she played in 4 NCAA title games winning 3 of them and really helped to cement the school as a powerhouse in the sport.

 

Just prior to this Meghan began to be noticed by USA Hockey as a player to keep tabs on in the future, by inviting her to their USA Hockey player development camp and then graduating to their annual USA Hockey Women’s National Festival.

 

Her first opportunity to wear the USA sweater took place in 2007 by being named a member of the Under-22 US Women’s National Team (WNT) and since then Meghan has become a member of the senior WNT participating in 5 World Championships, the 2010 Olympic Games and 7 Four Nations Cup tournaments.

 

At the same time, Meghan has had to overcome something that is common place in professional sports today and that is Post- Concussion Syndrome (PCS). In December of 2011, Meghan had PCS and was out of action for more then 6 months. During this time, their was a lot of dark days wondering if the symptoms would ever go away. This included days where you can’t concentrate, where you feel low, where you just want to be in dark rooms and try and relax. When Meghan thought it was healing the symptoms started to come back.

 

At the advice of fellow US WNT member Caitlin Cahow whom had similar issues, Meghan went to Atlanta (in December 2012) to seek out counsel from Chiropractic Neurologist Dr. Fred Carrick who had helped Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby to get back on the ice with his treatment. This treatment worked for Meghan and she was able to re-teach her brain using Dr Carrick’s therapy which was a key for her to come back and re-join the US WNT.

 

Meghan was cleared to play hockey again in February 2013 where she joined her pro team (Boston Blades - CWHL) subsequently won the Clarkson Cup and then was named to the 2013 IIHF Women’s World Championship team winning the title in April.

 

As a member of the 2013-14 US National Team her dream was to make it to Sochi and win the nation’s first Olympic gold medal since 1998. In November of 2013, Meghan was named as the Team Captain and on January 1, 2014 at the NHL’s Winter Classic, she was named to her 2nd Olympic team.

 

Her journey to becoming an Olympic champion looked to have a golden ending including scoring a goal in the game. Unfortunately with a few bad bounces and an empty net goal post hit by a teammate, it just was not meant to be and her team had to settle for a Silver medal to arch rival Canada with a loss in OT.

 

While this Olympics did not have the ending that she had worked so hard to achieve over the past 4 years with various ailments, she was able to showcase her values in a difficult setting with class, dignity and sportsmanship on a world stage that all should look to when representing their nation.

 

Off the ice, Meghan continues to lead as a member of the USOC Team for Tomorrow and in working with Special Olympics Mass.