By JOHN WAWROW and MELISSA GOLDIN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. girls’s hockey gold medal-winning workforce has politely declined an invite from President Donald Trump to attend his State of the Union deal with on Tuesday.
“We’re sincerely grateful for the invitation prolonged to our gold medal–successful U.S. Ladies’s Hockey Workforce and deeply respect the popularity of their extraordinary achievement,” the U.S. girls’s workforce stated in an announcement launched Monday. “As a result of timing and beforehand scheduled tutorial {and professional} commitments following the Video games, the athletes are unable to take part. They have been honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.”
Trump additionally invited the U.S. males’s gold medal-winning workforce.
Scheduling can be a problem because the NHL common season resumes with 5 video games on Wednesday and the PWHL resumes on Thursday.
Logistics performed a task within the choice, as lots of the girls gamers weren’t scheduled to reach in North America till Monday night. The boys’s workforce flew by constitution to Miami earlier Monday. The ladies took a business flight and have been scheduled to land in Atlanta.
An individual acquainted with the scenario advised The Related Press that the ladies’s gamers didn’t study of the invite till late Sunday night time, making it tough to alter their journey plans. The particular person spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly in regards to the workforce’s journey plans.
The White Home didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the standing of each groups.
When extending the invitation to the lads’s workforce on Sunday night time, Trump stated, “I need to let you know, we’re going to must convey the ladies’s workforce, you do know that.” Trump joked that if he didn’t additionally invite the ladies’s workforce, “I do consider I most likely can be impeached.”
The Olympic event featured two thrilling medal finals, each ending in time beyond regulation, with the American girls beating Canada 2-1 within the gold medal sport on Thursday. The U.S. males beat Canada on Sunday.
“It’s been a whirlwind, it’s been superb. It’s a dream of ours, it was such an incredible approach to unite the nation,” Matthew Tkachuk of the U.S. males’s workforce stated after arriving in Miami.
“We felt the help being throughout the Atlantic and now being again on residence soil we might really feel it the second the wheels hit the bottom. So excited to be again within the biggest nation on the earth and so excited to have fun.”
Tkachuk stated it was an honor to listen to from Trump after the win. “And so we’re positively honored to characterize him and the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands throughout the nation.”
Vice President JD Vance attended two of the U.S. girls’s preliminary spherical wins along with his household over the primary week of the Video games.
AP writers Stephen Whyno, Charles Odum in Atlanta, and Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.
AP Winter Olympic: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
