The Story of the 1980 US Men's Olympic Hockey Team
             It was more than a hockey game. It was the US, against the world. It was freedom vs. communism. No one gave them a hope or a way to win. It was a sliver of the cold war played out on a sheet of ice. Here you have a bunch of fresh-faced college kids taking on the big bad soviet bear. In the US, in the Olympics, the confluence of events was so extrodanary that it will never happen again. No one paid attention to what Americans said in the world anymore. Our hostages were taken and we couldn't get them back. The Red Army went into Afghanistan, and we couldn't get them out. It might have been the all time low point for American self-esteem. Who knew that these kids would be the vehicle to make Americans excited and proud to wave a flag again? It was a miracle, David slew Goliath. It was the greatest sports moment of the 20th century. This is the story of the 1980 U.S. hockey team and their importance in the world at that time.
             America for many, it is a word that conjures up images of a land made of miracles. Where anything is possible, but that's not how it was in the late 70's when a darkness seemed to hang over the nation. It was Kent State and final defeat in Vietnam. There was Watergate, and Three Mile Island, there were long lines at the gas stations, and exuberant interest rates at the banks. And at the end of the decade, an overwhelming imaged, signifying how powerless we've become as we seen our men taken hostage in Iran and we couldn't save them. No one would know that of all things, a hockey game, played by twenty American kids, full of optimism and determination that would rejuvenate the American spirit and become a symbol of national pride. No one could know how important one game could be to a nation that seemed to be losing its way, certainly not in 1979 when a weary leader told us that we were a nation in crisis....