Shelley Looney

Shelley Looney (born January 21, 1972 in Brownstown, Michigan) is an American ice hockey player. She won a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics and a silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Looney played collegiately at Northeastern University from 1991–94, winning multiple awards including ECAC All-Star, 1993 ECAC Tournament MVP and ECAC Player of the Year, 1993-94. She was inducted into Northeastern College’s Hockey Hall of Fame in 1999.

In the gold medal game at the 1998 Winter Olympics, Looney scored the game winning goal. In the fall of 2002, Looney played with Team USA teammate Cammi Granato for the Vancouver Griffins of the National Women's Hockey League. She finished second on the team and fourth in the Western Conference with 35 points (10-25) in 24 regular-season games.

While playing for still playing for Team USA, Looney went into coaching, serving as an assistant with the Under-17 Boys' National Team Development Program in 2003, then joining the University of Vermont as assistant coach of the women's team in 2005-06. She left that position to train for the next Olympics.

In 2006, she was one of the final players cut from the Olympic team that would go on to with a bronze medal at Turin. She ended her USA Hockey career with 61 goals and 136 points in 151 games.

Today, Shelley is Girl's Hockey Director for the New Jersey Colonials under-18 team.



"Thank You Canada"
In 1979, the government of Canada helped six Americans escape from Iran when "students" stormed the US embassy, precipitating the Iran Hostage Crisis. Shelley, then a seven-year-old girl growing up in Brownstown Township, Michigan, wrote a letter of thanks to Canada. The letter was later transcribed and released as a single by Mercury Records in March 1980, under the title "(This Is My Country) Thank You, Canada". The brief (1:26) spoken-word record received some airplay and made Cashbox's Top 100 (two weeks at #99) and Billboard Magazine's "Bubbling Under The Hot 100" chart nationally, peaking at #109. (Ironically, Looney would later score the game-winning goal against the Canadians in the 1998 Olympics gold-medal game.)