PYEONGCHANG — For 17 brief days, once every four years, Americans delight in the championship roar of female skiers and skaters and snowboarders. But no sooner than the Olympic Games begin, the flame goes out, and we tell all those talented female athletes to sit down and shut up.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one shouted “U-S-A!” a million times: Smiling hockey player Kendall Coyne, a gold medal draped around her neck, is being lifted to the rafters in the arms of Michael Schofield, a 301-pound NFL lineman that also happens to be her fiancé.

The happiest jubilation shot from PyeongChang 2018 ignited a party in America. After years of disappointment, the U.S. women’s hockey team vanquished all their Olympic demons, beating arch-rival Canada 3-2 Thursday in a shootout.

It was awesome.

The image of Schofield, a former Broncos tackle that now plays for the Los Angeles Chargers, bounding as carefully as a massive offensive tackle can bound over the ice to congratulate Coyne has been captured in photographs everywhere. It’s an image of pure joy, as cool as any snapshot from a sporting event since John Elway hoisted the Vince Lombardi Trophy after years of Super Bowl frustration.

Here’s hoping the photo of Coyne and Schofield, who are planning a summer wedding, not only made America smile, but begins to change the way we look at female athletes. How many times do we see an NBA or major-league baseball star, both wearing a goofy championship grin and an adoring woman around his shoulder? The image of Schofield admiring Coyne bends all our perceptions of gender roles.

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“I think everyone in the world knows there’s still room for growth for women in sports and women in business or all walks of life,” said U.S. hockey star Meghan Duggan, among the players that waged a fierce battle for equal pay for international competition a year ago.

Read the scoreboard and weep, sports chauvinists: U.S. women have won a dozen of the 21 medals claimed by Americans in South Korea, which means it could be the first Winter Games since 1998 where female athletes have roared to podium more often than men.

But how much respect do Olympic women really get? Let’s check the ticket prices. A prime, lower-bowl seat for the epic hockey showdown between the United States and Canada was sold for $322 U.S. dollars and change. And what was the cost for a comparable seat for the gold-medal game between the men, despite the fact the NHL declined to send its superstars to the Olympics? Try $823.

“Aren’t the women’s events at the Olympics every bit as compelling?” said Katy Franz, a fan that traveled from Cleveland to attend the Games, and bought hockey tickets to the women’s game, because they were available at a discounted rate, compared to the men.

One could make a reasonable argument the Summer Games also provide a stage for gender equity. I would, however, beg to differ. Legendary Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt got more applause than swimmer Katy Ledecky, who won five medals in the pool for Team USA. And that’s even before we touch the disgusting topic of how Dr. Larry Nassar exploited female gymnasts for his perverted pleasure.

The list of female athletes that would get mobbed for autographs in the Cherry Creek Mall could fit on the back of a matchbook cover. There’s tennis champion Serena Williams, as well as Venus, her sister. Lindsey Vonn can not only ski faster than 99.99 percent of the men on a mountain, she could stop traffic by waving to admirers on Main Street, USA. But what about Hope Solo or Chris Evert? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Mirai Nagasu, a 24-year-old skater from California, became an ‘it girl’ in PyeongChang. She became the first American woman to land a triple axel in Olympic competition, and created more buzz when it was revealed she helped fund her figure-skating career in recent years by working as an ice girl at Avalanche games in Denver, where she shoveled frosty debris from the rink surface during stoppages in play.

“Gotta pay for skating somehow,” Nagasu tweeted, before winning her medal with a clutch performance in the team competition.

She squirreled away the bronze in the pocket of her warm-up jacket after competing Friday in the free skate, when she aborted an attempt of a triple axel after catching a rut with her skate and finished in tenth place.

“When I didn’t land my tripel axel in the short program, my mom told, ‘Who cares if you get last place? This is the Olympics.’ Making it is the hard part,” said Nagasu, who trains and attends college in Colorado Springs.

“Today I put my medal in my pocket — here she is — and I said, ‘Mirai, you’ve done your job already and this is all just icing.’ ”

I asked Nagasu if she had big plans to turn a bronze medal into a profitable career.

“I want to be on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ because I want to be a star,” Nagasu replied. Related Articles Nuggets 3-pointers: Anthony Davis gets last laugh vs. Nikola Jokic in duel of NBA’s best big men

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Reality TV shows are as American as iPhones and apple pie. When the flame goes out, so will the country’s interest in sports heroics by females. Shouldn’t women that win an Olympic medal be allowed to dream bigger?