Murphy, Former Standouts to Assist New IIHF Program

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Brown head coach Digit Murphy and eight former League standouts are among 38 individuals selected as coach mentors and athlete ambassadors for the International Ice Hockey Federation's Ambassador and Mentor Program (AMP), it was announced today by USA Hockey.

Murphy, a standout at Cornell, and former Brown standouts Katie King Crowley and Jodi McKenna shall serve as coach mentors.

Former Harvard standouts Jennifer Botterill, Jamie Hagerman and AJ (Mleczko) Griswold; former Dartmouth standout Correne Bredin; former Princeton standout Andrea Kilbourne-Hill; and former St. Lawrence standout Gina Kingsbury are among the 19 players selected to take part in the program as athlete ambassadors.

The AMP is a women's hockey development initiative designed to assist women's programs worldwide by creating partnerships between athletes and coaches from the top four world ranked teams - the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden - and countries that are striving to join the world's elite.

Each athlete or coach was assigned to a country for a two-and-a-half year time period leading up to the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. During the program term, there will be an expectation of communication every two to three weeks between the coach mentors and ambassadors and the respective coaches of both the senior and under-18 national programs.

"By assigning the same team of mentors and ambassadors to a country for a period of two-and-a-half years, the teams that will qualify for Sochi will have a resource that no team entering an Olympic Games has previously had," said Tanya Foley, the IIHF women's program manager. "We believe this will help teams be prepared for Olympic-level competition in a very positive way."

The player and coach assignments are listed below.

IIHF Ambassador and Mentor Program
U.S. Player and Coach Assignments

Name, Country, Role

Jennifer Botterill, Russia, Athlete Ambassador
Correne Bredin, Slovakia, Athlete Ambassador
Katie King Crowley, Norway, U18 Coach Mentor
AJ (Mleczko) Griswold, Kazakhstan, Athlete Ambassador
Jamie Hagerman, Norway, Athlete Ambassador
Andrea Kilbourne-Hill, China, Athlete Ambassador
Gina Kingsbury, France, Athlete Ambassador
Jodi McKenna, Germany, U18 Coach Mentor
Digit Murphy, Slovakia, Senior Coach Mentor