"It's pretty incredible to think about it, but my parents would put us out in the middle of the ice, and we'd scream and cry and crawl back, with my mom coaxing us off with hot chocolate," she says. "Eventually we kind of hobbled off on our feet."

Mleczko first became interested in hockey at age five when she watched the team coached by her father, a schoolteacher.

"It wasn't something my parents forced me to do," she says. "It was something I knew I loved, I knew I wanted to devote time to. Winning that gold medal with that team was just spectacular--the emotional high we were on, it was just surreal."

A.J. went by Jaime until fourth grade. She was playing on boys' hockey teams at the time, so she decided to go by her initials because she "saw Jaime as a feminine name."

She says she stayed with hockey for the love of the game although there were few women's hockey players for her to look up to.

"We didn't have female role models," Mleczko says. "I think it's an interesting sensation to know we're giving younger boys and girls role models. It's not just little girls coming up and asking for our autographs, it's boys too."

Mleczko says the Olympics became a dream only in 1992, when she found out that women's hockey would be an Olympic sport.

Now she is preparing for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

"Some people will say, `You've achieved your goal, why eliminate that memory and try again?' but the way I look at it is, it was such an incredible experience, I want it again," she says. "I'm not ready to hang 'em up, and playing in our country is something that really appeals to me. The Japanese women's hockey team is not really strong, but their enthusiasm was incredible because they had such strong support. Just seeing that made me want to play in front of American fans."

Taking the two years off gave Mleczko an added bonus besides preparing her for the Olympics. Now she has a year of eligibility left and can use college games to keep her skills sharp. Training will be more difficult when she doesn't have the college schedule to help her.

For now, however, she is a full-time student, a history concentrator affiliated with Kirkland House but living off-campus. She has to deal with all the typical senior year worries of finding a job, as well as the additional challenge of overcoming a long absence.

"I think the hardest adjustment for me is academic, because for the last two years, I've devoted 100 percent of my time to being a good hockey player," Mleczko says. "Now, I have to balance that with the academic world, with social aspects, all that stuff, and I think that is tougher to adjust to than the removal and the living off campus."

Although she first met her fellow seniors when she was a junior and they were freshmen, says she feels comfortable with her teammates.

The comfort level will be important because, as Mleczko says she witnessed first-hand at Nagano, chemistry will be vital to the team's success. Harvard's roster will have three returning Olympians--Angela Ruggiero (U.S.) and Jennifer Botterill (Canada), as well as Tammy Shewchuk, a late cut from the Canadian Olympic squad.

"We have a lot of talent on the team," Mleczko says. "People say, `Oh wow, you have three Olympians, you'll kill people.' Well, what's overlooked is the talent beyond that."