Courtesy USA Hockey

HAMEENLINNA, Finland – The U.S. Women's National Team made history by successfully defending its world title with a 4-1 victory over Canada on Sunday at the 2009 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Women's Championship. Wesleyan women's ice hockey head coach Jodi McKenna, serving as one of two assistants at this year's tournament, helped the United States complete the event with a 4-0-0-1 record.

McKenna recently completed her second season as the head coach at Wesleyan after spending nine seasons as an assistant coach at St. Lawrence University. In her nine seasons with St. Lawrence, she helped the Saints qualify for the NCAA tournament five times, making it to the Frozen Four on each occasion and playing in the title game in 2001.

A 1998 graduate of Brown University, McKenna played four seasons for the Bears, and helped the team capture an ECAC regular-season or tournament title three times. She has been involved with USA Hockey Player Development Camps and was an assistant coach at USA Hockey's Women's Under-22 Camp last summer and at the USA Hockey Women's Holiday Camp in December.

For Team USA, Caitlin Cahow (Branford, Conn.) scored twice, Jessie Vetter (Cottage Grove, Wis.) made 39 saves as the team played a penalty-free game to secure its third world title in the last four world championships (2005, 2008, 2009).

In a physical, back-and-forth second period, Canada knotted the score at the 5:11 mark when Jennifer Botterill put a wrist shot just inside the left post from the slot. The U.S. came back with a goal five minutes later, as Jocelyne Lamoureux (Grand Forks, N.D.) fed a pass to a rushing Meghan Duggan (Danvers, Mass.) in the slot, as Duggan beat a Canadian defender and put a shot over Charline Labonte's glove at 10:10.

After Canada's Sarah Vaillancourt was whistled for just the second penalty of the game at 6:24 of the final stanza, Cahow netted her second goal of the game. With help from Natalie Darwitz (Eagan, Minn.) and Gigi Marvin (Warroad, Minn.), Cahow swept the puck past Labonte from between the faceoff circles at 7:09 to give the U.S. a 3-1 lead.

With Labonte pulled in favor of an extra Canadian attacker, Hilary Knight (Hanover, N.H.) put one in the empty net with nine seconds left in the game to account for the 4-1 final score.