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Coach Sarah Murray speaks to one of her players on the unified Korean women’s hockey team during a practice at the Kwangdong Hockey Center on Feb. 19 in advance of the team’s final game against Sweden.
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Team drops final match against Sweden as it settles for eighth place in tournament
Sarah Murray, 30, head coach of the unified Korean women’s hockey team, exhibited her fondness for the North Korean hockey players after the team’s last official practice at the Kwandong Hockey Centre on Feb. 19. "It's really sad. I don't usually cry. But I think I am going to cry when they go… You start caring about these players. And then they go back, and you don't know when you're going to see them again,” Murray said. “Hopefully maybe we can do exchange games, and continue to help those players.” Murray is well-known as a straight shooter and yet cool-headed. While she bluntly said that the rapid movement toward a unified Korean team in early January was “kind of mind-blowing,” she soon settled on a practical solution: “This situation is out of our control. We have the ability to take on two or three North Korean players.” When the 12 North Korean players arrived in South Korea on Jan. 25, Murray took special care of them in assigning seats in the locker room and handing out playbooks. She also showed up at a birthday party for the North Korean players and clapped for them. “About a week after we started training together, I felt that we had become one team. [North Korean coach] Pak said the North Korean athletes feel like family, and I told him that I agreed,” Murray recalled. When Murray was drawing up the roster for the games, she zeroed in on talent, and she was able to bring stability to the unified team while maintaining a very cooperative relationship with the North Korean assistant coach, Pak Chul-ho. Along the way, she also seems to have gotten close to the North Korean players. Noting that North Korea is usually on the other side in South Korean sports, Murray said it was a really remarkable experience for players from competing teams to come together and compete on the same side. After the practice, Murray took a souvenir photo with Pak Chul-ho. "We were just taking pictures together because we don't know when we'll be able to do pictures like that again… We're going to print out all the pictures that we take, and we're going to give them to [Pak], so he has memories to take back with him." With Murray at the helm, the unified team settled for eighth place in the tournament, capped off by a loss against Sweden on Feb. 20. In total, the team managed just two goals over the course of its five games, while conceding 28. “Even after the game against Sweden is over, I’m going to keep teaching the North Koreans until they go home on Feb. 26. I want to help them as much as I can,” Murray said. By Kim Chang-keum, staff reporter Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
