Skating had never been a part of recreational activities for Linda Gross Sinrod ’62, but in college her roommate was an expert figure skater, which inspired Sinrod to try it out. She found she liked it and even skated in the ice show during Winter Carnival her sophomore year. But after graduating, her life became busy, and she didn’t put on a pair of skates for over 10 years.
Then one day she was cleaning out some things and came across those skates. Knowing there was a frozen pond nearby, she headed over to see if she still had her skating skills. Apparently she did, because another woman on the ice asked her if she wanted to try playing ice hockey. She thought it sounded fun, and she enjoyed it so much that she became a founding member of the first women’s ice hockey team in the Washington, D.C., area. Even though the other players were much younger, she didn’t let that stop her from giving it her best shot. In fact, over the next 10 years, her best shots included 23,250 pucks on goal. “I used to practice puck handling in my basement and would shoot pucks against a wall 15 feet away where I had outlined a goal,” she says.
In her 40s, she figured she was getting too old to compete and left the team, becoming busy with a job as a programmer at IBM and family activities. Once she retired from IBM, however, she began to think about her hockey days and, out of curiosity, looked up some old teammates. She found one who was coaching the Prince William Wildcats, a senior women’s team in the Mid-Atlantic League, and she decided to join them—at age 67. She played until she was 75 and, over the course of that time, shot another 21,923 pucks on goal.
But age takes its toll, and as she slowed down, she became less competitive, and the team asked her to leave. Sinrod wasn’t willing to give up her passion, however—she found a women’s league at a rink where teams were picked twice a year and played against each other. She was still one of the oldest players, and that piqued her curiosity. How many other female hockey players were out there near her age of 80? She checked the Guinness World Records to find out who the oldest one might be.
At that time, the oldest player was 72. Sinrod certainly had that beat, so she decided to apply to Guinness to set her own record. She got it. She was officially the oldest woman ice hockey player at age 80 years, 305 days.
Sinrod is still playing, at age 84. She figures it’s time to update Guinness, so she is applying for the record again. As she skates on, she’s pretty sure she can hold onto it.
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