It keeps you up late at night, relentless in its constancy, constant in its relentlessness. It aches in your heart, beating right through your throat, throbbing in your head, living in the sweat that runs down your forehead and stabbing at your spirit. Maybe you haven’t gotten the full-fledged case of it yet, but you will soon. You’ll know it’s over and there’s nothing you can do when the wheels of the trolleys start to appear as hockey pucks, and the hustle and bustle of Marsh Plaza begins to sound like the swish of skates on a newly Zambonied ice. That’s when you know Beanpot fever has struck.
Those with the fever need to think seriously about the upcoming Beanpot title tilt between our beloved Terriers and those dastardly and dirty BC Eagles. The fever-ridden folks need Beanpot talk to survive, and deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me to provide that chatter, you need me to talk Beanpot, but it’s not going to happen.
After Jack Parker’s posse leaves the ice on practice days, there’s another group of skaters that takes to the cool surface of Walter Brown Arena. They toil in relative obscurity here at BU, gaining little recognition or fanfare, never earning much in the way of fan support and never cheered on by the pep band. They are the women’s ice hockey club, and one of the finest examples of athletics this university can display.
They work hard, are dedicated and passionate and always find time to have fun. They wear the scarlet and white as they should, but with one unique difference. On the sweater, they’ve got the older and much-preferred logo of a terrier on the ‘N’ at the end of ‘Boston’. This team passes and moves the puck with great creativity and ease, and they work well as a team, serving to show how together this group really is. A diverse group coming from all different parts of the country, from Boston to Milwaukee, and Miami Beach to Louisville, they all play for the same reason: the love of their sport.
Senior forward Lindsay Strickland puts it best saying, ‘My teammates are here for each other through anything, and it’s great to be able to get on the ice and do something we love together.’
When asked about the lack of fan support (not unusual considering the fans here don’t come out to see many of the varsity teams even, but that’s another story) Strickland responded saying, ‘It’s just sort of like we’re playing for ourselves, we’re not playing for any scholarship, we’re not playing for all this attention, we’re playing cause we love the game.’
That love has shown itself on the ice as the team worked hard last year, making it all the way to Atlanta as the first seed in the east for the ACHA National Tournament. In Atlanta, the women lost to St. Cloud State in the semifinals, and ended up finishing fourth out of the eight teams that made the trip.
This is the team’s second year in the American Collegiate Hockey Association, a league for club hockey teams across the nation. Through the season, the Terrier club hockey team will take on various other hockey clubs, Division III and I teams. The team is actually just coming off a 7-0 loss to Harvard on Tuesday in the first round of the 25th women’s Beanpot (those fever-crazed folks get their wish now, but only for a second). What you need to know about that one is that the Crimson have three Olympians on their team, (one of them being Angela Ruggiero, the best defender in the world) and are ranked No. 1 in the nation. They are quite good, and as a result of all that, BU will face Northeastern in the consolation game this coming Tuesday. That’s just the way it goes for a club team that’s going up against three other Division I programs in the Beanpot. The BU players, contrary to their male counterparts, can’t hope to win it all, but rather wish just to stay healthy, have fun and do their best, which is all anyone can ask.
The growth of women’s hockey overall has certainly helped BU, and can only serve as an advantage in the future as they hope to make the rise to varsity at the Division I level.
Team advisor Chris Daigle has seen this trend firsthand.
‘Before we might have had maybe five girls that have had some varsity hockey experience. Now we have probably more than half of our girls, if not more, that have either played on a boys team in high school or a girls team, so they’ve improved greatly over the years, the last few especially.’
With the increasing participation in the sport, Boston University, the source of great hockey that it is, could only hope to see its women’s team make the leap to the big time, perhaps when the new Harry Agganis Arena is completed.
‘The talk is that there’s going to be more locker room space [at the new arena] and things like that for them, so that would be the earliest that they would go to the varsity level, but no comments have been made by the university yet exactly if and when they would be upgraded.’
There are no egos on this team, no superstars putting themselves above the group in hopes of gaining that multi-million dollar contract. These young women skate onto the ice as a team, and leave the ice as one. In all senses of the word, they are a team. A squad that someday soon will get all the luxuries of Division I glory.
In the meantime, catch the Terriers in action against Norwich University this weekend at Walter Brown Arena. Drop in, and catch some great hockey. That’s what all you feverish puck heads really want anyway.