BREAKING THE ICE

SAN JOSE —  Angela Ruggiero knows how to please a crowd.

Playing for the U.S. women’s hockey team in a recent exhibition against Canada, Ruggiero turned the game into a personal showcase of her imposing style.

Ruggiero, a 5-foot-9, 175-pound defenseman, quickly stood out in a whirl of fast-paced action by slamming a Canadian attacker against the Plexiglas in front of an appreciative crowd of nearly 8,000 people at the San Jose Arena.

“She’s nuts, she’s gorgeous, she’s my girl,” said awestruck, 24-year old fan Travis O’Neil after exchanging high-fives with his buddies.

Three and a half years ago, Ruggiero (pronounced Ruh-JEER-oh) was an anonymous Simi Valley youngster with a taste for the rough-and-tumble world of boys’ hockey.

Today, the 18-year-old’s skill, size and penchant for contact have made her a key player in a sport that Olympic officials hope will--in its medal debut at the Winter Games in Nagano, Japan--capture the hearts of fans as women’s basketball did in 1996.

U.S. Coach Ben Smith calls Ruggiero “a key building block in women’s ice hockey at the international level” and someone who fans such as O’Neil will gladly pay to watch.

Although Ruggiero is the U.S. team’s youngest member--the oldest is 31--she is clearly among the best American players.

“I would tag her as their No. 2 defenseman,” said Canadian Coach Shannon Miller, whose team is expected to face the U.S. in the gold-medal game. “You can tell she has room to mature, but she has a lot to work with. Offensively she’s a threat to us and defensively she plays well both in front of the net and along the [boards].”

Photographs of women playing hockey date to the late 1800s and teams from the U.S. and Canada played each other as early as 1916.

But the first opportunity for players to find the spotlight came when the International Ice Hockey Federation sponsored the inaugural women’s world championship in 1990.

Although Canada has defeated the U.S. in each of the four world championship games, a youth movement highlighted by Ruggiero resulted in the Americans beating their rivals six times in a 13-game pre-Olympic series.

“We’re the two best teams in the world,” Ruggiero said. “Even though we’ve seen so much of each other, it’s exciting every time we play them.”

Ruggiero got her start in hockey as a 7-year-old at a dark, cramped rink in the Conejo Valley. Pushed onto the ice by her father, Bill, Ruggiero cried and begged to leave. By the end of the session, she was skating on her own.

Ruggiero played on a succession of youth teams, first in Thousand Oaks and later in Pasadena. By her fourth season, she was the only girl on each team after her older sister, Pam, quit playing.

Always among her team’s top players, Ruggiero did not face a preset notion that she shouldn’t be playing hockey, as she might have in New England or the Midwest. But she was frequently a target.

“Boys would see Angela come out with the ponytail and think, ‘There’s a girl, we’re gonna kill her,’ ” said Bill Ruggiero, whose family moved to the Detroit area several years ago. “A couple minutes later, they’d try it and find themselves on their butts.”

At 13, Ruggiero touched off a brawl when she responded to shoves from opponents by punching and knocking a boy to the ice. Parents climbed over the boards to disperse the growing dogpile.

“She’d check the boys harder than the boys would check the boys,” said Beth Tornabene, who had one son play with and against Ruggiero in youth hockey and another attend prep school with her in Connecticut. “She was awesome from the very beginning.”

Ruggiero’s physical presence often overshadows her considerable skill. But in women’s hockey, aggressive body checking is penalized. Players at the international level must have exceptional skating and puck-handling ability.

“When I first met her, the most interesting thing was her sense of the game,” said Smith, the U.S. coach. “She had that anticipation, that extra sense of where she was on the ice and what was happening around her. Only the special athletes have that.”

At 14, Ruggiero played with California’s first state girls’ team in a Connecticut tournament and immediately attracted scholarship offers from several New England prep schools with girls’ hockey teams.

Within two weeks, Ruggiero went from preparing for her freshman year at Simi Valley High to a completely different experience at Choate Rosemary Hall, a coed boarding school of about 800 students in Wallingford, Conn.

“Being from the West Coast, I had no clue at all that women’s hockey even existed,” Ruggiero said. “But I went to prep school and we played college teams and I was like, ‘Wow, I can play at this level.’ ”

Ruggiero was dominant in girls’ hockey and holds the career records for goals, assists and points at Choate, where she is a senior.

A three-time president of her class and one of its top students, Ruggiero will graduate on schedule thanks to taking extra classes last year and to school administrators who waived some academic requirements.

Ruggiero’s path to the Olympic team began when she earned berths on the U.S. junior national team in 1995 and 1996 and the national team in 1996 and 1997.

U.S. captain Cammi Granato, sister of NHL player Tony Granato, said Ruggiero made a smooth transition to international play and has fit in well with her older teammates.

“It was obvious right away that she’s here to stay for a long time,” said Granato, who bonds with Ruggiero over a shared taste for the English techno-music group Prodigy. “It’s not even like having a little sister. She’s just been a great addition to the team and refreshing to have in the locker room.”

Ruggiero stood out at the initial Olympic tryouts last summer at Lake Placid, N.Y., easily surviving the cut. The same could not be said for a front tooth.

While filming a credit-card commercial with teammates, Ruggiero had one of her trademark collisions--but with a door.

“They had us running through two doors and they were rushing us, so we didn’t try it first,” Ruggiero said. “I hit the door that didn’t open the way we were going. My face just planted and I left a mark on the door and half my tooth chipped off.”

After some dental work, Ruggiero has gotten back to delivering hits.

She was once nicknamed “Terminator” on the ice, but Ruggiero and those close to her say such behavior stops when she unlaces her skates.

“That’s how I play the game,” Ruggiero said. “If you see me off the ice, I’m not all [masculine] and I don’t break windows or run around and cause trouble.”

Ruggiero’s well-rounded reputation has made her the nation’s top college women’s hockey recruit. At the Division I level, 13 teams have varsity programs and many offer full athletic scholarships or academic financial aid.

Ruggiero has narrowed her choices to Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard and Minnesota. But whichever jersey she dons for college competition, she sees herself in red, white and blue for years to come.

“I’ll only be 22 by the 2002 Olympics and hopefully by that time I’ll be more of an impact player,” Ruggiero said. “Right now I can see myself playing forever.”

Smith said Ruggiero has a chance to become “an icon of American women’s hockey,” and that her health and commitment will be the determining factors in the length of her career.

“She’s quite a bit below the average age on this team,” Smith said. “I can see her at the Olympics one night in 2018, looking around and saying ‘Do I want to do this anymore?’ ”