Boston Fleet stay focused — but not on Trump’s slight on women

WELLESLEY — The Boston Fleet aren’t serious about exterior distractions, together with the latest slight of the gold medal-winning US girls’s hockey staff by President Trump.

Three Fleet gamers — Megan Keller, Haley Winn, and Aerin Frankel — had been a part of the staff that received gold in Milan on Keller’s extra time purpose towards Canada.

A number of days later, after the US males’s staff additionally beat Canada in extra time to win gold, Trump referred to as the the lads’s locker room to congratulate the gamers and appeared to make Staff USA’s girls the butt of a joke.

Speaking on a speakerphone, Trump prolonged an invite to the White Home to the lads’s staff, then added, “We’re going to should carry the ladies’s staff, you do know that?” The president later joked that if he didn’t lengthen an invite to the ladies, he would in all probability be impeached.

“The telephone name was what it was, and I want it was dealt with higher, however if you speak to our gamers, the individuals who had been there, I believe the largest factor for them is how particular this second was,” stated Fleet basic supervisor Danielle Marmer.

“It’s such a particular second and an unbelievable accomplishment, and something that detracts from that, for me, is pointless. The main target ought to actually be about these gamers who received the gold medal.”

Fleet coach Kris Sparre has not addressed the second together with his gamers and doesn’t plan to.

“There’s a lot pleasure round our group, a lot pleasure round these gamers,” he stated. “For me, I believe we’re doing ourselves a disservice and distracting with different issues which are exterior of hockey.”

Members of the US males’s staff had been in attendance for Trump’s State of the Union handle on Tuesday evening, and the president stated throughout his handle the ladies’s staff would “quickly” go to the White Home.

A spokesperson for the ladies’s staff beforehand stated in a press release to the Globe that Staff USA declined an invite from the Trump administration to go to the White Home, citing prior obligations.

“We’re sincerely grateful for the invitation and deeply respect the popularity of their extraordinary achievement,” the assertion learn. “Because of the timing and beforehand scheduled educational {and professional} commitments following the Video games, the athletes are unable to take part. They had been honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.”

The Fleet will proceed their Olympic celebration on Monday with a fan occasion on the View Boston statement deck on the Prudential Heart, which the staff introduced Thursday had offered out.

They may return to the ice Saturday in Ottawa to kick off a five-game highway journey, earlier than returning to Agganis Area March 17 to face Toronto at 7 p.m.