When the Wisconsin Badgers took to the ice to open their season last Friday, it had been 551 days since Annie Pankowski had put on her familiar white sweater with a large red W on the front.
Taking a year off of college and deferring eligibility in an Olympic year isn't that unusual – her teammate Emily Clark did the same thing in order to play for Canada in Pyeongchang. The 18-plus months of toil and sacrifice had a payoff for Clark as she won silver with Team Canada.
Not so for Pankowski, who was cut from Team USA in early December, just 64 days before the team's first game in Pyeongchang.
When Team USA named their roster for centralization in May 2017, there were 23 women on the roster – the number of players they were allowed to take to Pyeongchang. It was an unusual move to not have a larger pool of players that would be whittled down during the residency process, and many assumed that this roster was the one that would eventually and officially become the Olympic team. Then, in November, three additional players were added to the roster and it was clear cuts would need to be made prior to leaving for the Olympics.
It was a frustratingly familiar situation for Pankowski, who was one of the last two players cut from the Team USA roster prior to the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Then still in high school and the youngest player on the roster, Pankowski had come to terms with that cut. Before her 2018 experience, she referred to the 2014 cut as "The Setback" and said it helped her learn what it was like to go through adversity, which seems almost laughable now.
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