Hollywood Meets Lynah Rink

Katelyn Pippy, a high school senior from the Pittsburgh area , is both an outstanding hockey goalie and a up-and-coming actress. Pippy has a regular role on the TV show Army Wives, which airs on Lifetime. She's also an excellent goalie, and balances trips to hockey tournaments and development camps with trips to California to film.

As of next fall, Pippy will play hockey at Cornell:

She will attend and play hockey at NCAA Division I Cornell University. Part of what appealed to Pippy about the school was its size (13,000) and the fact it has a traditional campus with a traditional college atmosphere.

"With all the traveling, I didn't really get to do the whole high school thing, so I wanted to do the college thing right," Pippy said. "Cornell just had a great campus and the school is great and then the hockey program, too. It kind of all came together."

In the meantime, Pippy will take a year off to play on a traveling U-19 team. She's only 17, and she doesn't feel quite ready to make the jump to the NCAA.

However, it's not clear whether Pippy will be focusing more on hockey or acting during the interim year.

"I want to go to college but I might take a hiatus for a year and go to L.A. and see what it might be like," she said. "I want to do this more as a livelihood than as a hobby and since moving to L.A. is what I'll probably have to do, I want to take it for a test drive."

I'm also a little unsure of whether Pippy will be able to continue to pursue her acting career while playing for Cornell. She currently attends an arts high school which seems pretty flexible about letting her leave for stretches of time. Cornell, with its more rigorous academics and athletics, might not be so accommodating.

The parent of a prospective Cornell women's hockey player tells me that she is very down-to-earth for someone who's already a bit of a celebrity. We'll see if she's willing to sacrifice some of her Hollywood success to play at Lynah Rink.