Hockey sisters share golden Olympic memories

As Marissa Brandt sat in the stands at the women's ice hockey finals between Canada and the United States, nervously cheering for her sister Hannah, she recalled that only two days earlier her own team had bowed out of the Olympics. Marissa, who was born in South Korea but flown to the US for adoption at four months old, represented the unified Korean team, while her sister Hannah competed for Team USA, the eventual gold medal winners. "It was kind of like fate to have it work out the way it did," Hannah told AFP in an interview. The sisters grew up as best friends, playing hockey on the same teams until they went their separate ways at different US colleges. Unlike Hannah who had always dreamed of competing at the Olympics, Marissa had begun to lose interest in the sport at college until she received an unexpected offer to lace up her skates again. The Korea Ice Hockey Association was scouring through colleges across North America, looking for ethnic Korean players as it scrambled to create a team good enough to avoid humiliation when it hosted the Olympics. South Korea has only 319 registered female hockey players of its own, according to an International Ice Hockey Federation survey last year. Marissa was identified as a likely prospect, and invited to try out for the side in 2015. The turn of events brought the sisters back on the ice on the other side of the world, wearing two different jerseys. "We always thought we would take a trip to Korea but I never thought it would be under these circumstances," said Marissa. Hannah added: "I just couldn't be happier to have played in the Olympics with my sister in her birth country." It was Hannah's first Winter Olympics, where ahe helped Team USA win their first gold in hockey in 20 years. -'Proud to be Korean' - The story of the Brandt sisters at the Pyeongchang Games have made headlines in South Korea and Marissa -- whose Korean name is Park Yoon-jung -- is commanding celebrity status in her birth country. "Everyone wants a picture of me because of her," joked Hannah in an interview organised by Intel, the tech sponsor of the Pyeongchang Games. Ever since moving into the Gangneung Athletes' Village earlier this month, the girls have been inseparable, meeting up every day and watching each other play during the tournament. While the past two weeks have been all hockey for the sisters, the past few years have been a journey of reconnection for Marissa, who once sought to ignore her Korean heritage and was shy about her Asian facial features. Her first moment of pride about her Korean heritage came on the ice, when her team won gold in their division at the World Championships last year. "I was standing on the blue line and the flag was being raised and the national anthem was playing and in that specific moment, I was like, 'I'm very, very proud to be Korean.' "And I've never had that 'A-ha' moment of me being accepting of myself in that way so it was in that moment I was like 'Okay, I'm going to embrace this, I'm proud'." For Hannah, who had a "million questions" as a child about her sister's origin, it has been "amazing" to watch Marissa go through the journey of reconnecting with her roots. It would be "pretty special" if the Olympics led Marissa to meet her biological mother, Hannah said, although the time in South Korea has been "a huge step" for her sister to rediscover herself. Despite their obvious differences in facial features -- blond Hannah and darked-haired Marissa -- Hannah said: "I never really thought we looked too much different, even though obviously, yes we do." "Growing up it was funny beacause we would tell people we were sisters and no one would believe us. "They just thought we were best friends that we were joking around," Hannah said. "I guess now people finally believe us, I hope."