Olympic women’s players announce LV fund-raiser

Monday, May 19, 2003 | 9:57 a.m.

Christina Bailey and a few of her friends will play ice hockey against a group of local firefighters to benefit the youth Team Las Vegas Hockey Club.

The firefighters had better get in an abundance of practice.

Bailey played on the last two U.S. women's Olympic hockey teams, which won gold in Nagano and silver in Salt Lake City. About a dozen former teammates, including star Cammy Granato, have agreed to play in the event she has coordinated.

The exhibition game will be played on Saturday, May 31, at 7 p.m. at the 2,000-seat Santa Fe Station Ice Arena.

"It's one of those things that will catch on quickly," Bailey said. "The hockey community is jazzed. Elsewhere, it's taken some work to get people to understand that, yeah, we were in the Olympics."

Bailey, 31, retired from competitive hockey in January, when she moved to Las Vegas from New York to begin a professional career as a financial analyst.

She quickly immersed herself into the city's youth hockey scene, via the diverse Outlaws organization. "I like teaching the little ones," Bailey said.

The past and present members of the U.S. women's team will also appear at the Outlaws' second annual, shotgun-start Golf Classic on Sunday, June 1, at the Bears Best Country Club.

Bailey hopes the exhibition game will sell out, boost the non-profit organization's coffers for the upcoming season and help attract more girls to the sport. Of more than 400 kids involved in the program, only seven are girls.

"A couple of goalies, a couple of skaters," Bailey said. "We hope to draw girls into it to give them an opportunity to play."