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Chanda Gunn

Chanda Gunn, born in wide-open, sunny California, lives her life inside a net and on the ice, and couldn’t be happier about it. An Olympic athlete, Chanda was the US Women’s Olympic ice hockey goalie in the 2006 winter games in Torino, Italy. Life continues for this Olympic athlete in post-Olympic times, and she is currently finishing her degree in Athletic Training, Sports Medicine at Northeastern University and is enjoying her semi-settled life just outside of Boston, MA. Her training continues and hockey still the major focus of her life.

Childhood

Being a hockey player was not always what Chanda wanted to be. At the age of nine, Chanda was an avid swimmer and an active sportsman, enjoying many different sports and activities. Her swimming career ended at nine when she was diagnosed with Epilepsy, a seizure disorder, and swimming became too dangerous a sport for her to practice. Not wanting to give up sports completely, her only options became football and hockey, because of the amount of equipment required to wear to play them that would protect her if she ever had a seizure while playing. Hockey was the obvious choice for Chanda because it was the sport that her brother played.

Because she was so young when she was diagnosed with epilepsy, nine year old Chanda did not know a whole lot about her condition at that time. In a recent interview conducted with Chanda on May 23, 2006, she commented, “No, I had no idea what it was until probably five year after I was diagnosed”. She had a difficult time with her schoolmates when she was young because “I didn’t really understand what was happening to me and other kids didn’t understand what was happening to me”. Chanda now is an active volunteer for and supporter of the Epilepsy Therapy Development Project. Chanda played hockey for the Cal-Selects and on different boy’s teams and made the Junior National Team in her junior and senior year in high school.

College Years

Playing NCAA DI hockey seemed like the “next logical step” for Chanda and her hockey career because of the exposure the Jr. National Team provided for her, there were no shortage of school recruiting her to play in college. Chanda was accepted at and committed to going to Princeton for school and hockey but at the last minute decided on going to the University of Wisconsin Madison. Initially only worried about making friends because of her self described shyness, Chanda’s college hockey career soon became what she described as “turbulent”. In her first year at Wisconsin, Chanda got sick and had to miss a lot of school and ice time for time spent in the hospital. She withdrew from school and had a difficult time reapplying the following year. “I went through the whole college process again, not very many schools were recruiting me because I had just spent a year in the hospital” Northeastern University was the only school that would let her walk on to the team and she had to pay full tuition to the school. She received a scholarship when she became a starter for the team.

Chanda sited many differences between the two schools. “Wisconsin is a huge school that puts a lot of time and effort and money into their athletic program… Northeastern on the other hand, does what they can to get by” Being a smaller school very much into its academics, Chanda commented that “your teachers, a lot of time, have to be reminded that its ok for you to miss class for hockey”.She actually had to miss quite a bit of time for the Olympics and has not graduated yet. She will graduate in August of 2006.

The Olympics

Chanda went to the Olympics for the first time in 2006 in Torino, Italy. When talking about her experience at the Olympics, Chanda said, “The thing people don’t understand about the Olympics is that it’s a very personal experience and almost kind of a private experience. Everyone’s experience is different”. When asked to describe her favorite part of the Olympics, she responded “I think my favorite part of the Olympics were the individual, one-on-one moments I had with my teammates”. She talked about the disappointment she and her team felt when they found out that Cammie Granato, a veteran player and former captain of the women’s Olympic ice hockey team, would not be on the 2006 team. “We missed her a whole lot, she was one of my very good friends, still is one of my good friends, she was one of my leaders, one of my childhood heroes, but its also something that almost brought us together closer as a team because we all felt the same way, we were all disappointed not to have her with us”.

Chanda and her teammates walked away from the Olympics with bronze medals around their necks, medals that they fought to win and suffered losses for. A particularly hard loss was the one suffered at the hands of the Swedish. With that loss on top of their heads and two days before their last game, their last chance to qualify for a medal, the team had to deal with a lot of pressure. “It was a difficult time”, comments Chanda, “It took a lot of strength to just get through those two days alone, and than to come back and play that game, my team showed a tremendous amount of courage and strength to play that game and then to win the game.”

Life Today

Chanda may no longer be in Italy for the Olympics, but she still lives a very active life. She does a lot of charity work and along with the work she does for the Epilepsy Therapy Development Project, she is a volunteer with a Hospice program for terminally ill individuals, and also coaches kids as well as volunteers at schools for underprivileged and homeless kids. Working with kids, Chanda doesn’t have to be a well know Olympic athlete: “I work mostly with kids, and little kids don’t really know if you played in the NBA or the NHL or went to the Olympics, they just want attention and love”. Being a well-known Olympic athlete, on the other hand, has allowed her many opportunities she may not have had otherwise. Her job is to be an athlete and her income comes from her sport, leaving her with the freedom to train and volunteer her time as she wants. Recently she had participated in the Revlon Breast Cancer Walk and Sharon’s Run-Ride-Walk for Epilepsy. She also has a chance to appear on TV shows like Ellen, met the President of the United States, and she gets to see different parts of the country and world. “I get to travel a lot, almost too much, I’m getting kind of sick of traveling, but I’ve been a lot of places since the Olympics, the Olympics ended in February and I haven’t been in the same place for more than four days at a time.”

Chanda is now concentrating on finishing her degree and enjoying her new apartment outside of Boston, MA. She is a self-proclaimed computer geek and enjoys her down time by going to Starbucks and playing with her computer. Rascal Flatts is her favorite live band and she is also a fan of Natasha Bedingfield. Ask her were she’d be if she didn’t play hockey, she would reply “Country music singer, Dixie Chick for sure”.

Chanda Gunn

US Olympic Hockey Goalie

Chanda Gunn

Childhood

College Years

The Olympics

Life Today

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