ERIE, Pa. — Forwards Holly Lorms, Jillian Kirchner and Lauren Cherewyk entered the Boston University campus in the fall of 2007 as three freshmen about to play in a young, two-year women’s hockey program. Nearly four years later, they left the ice for the last time in the BU scarlet and white Sunday as national runners-up, following their 4-1 loss to University of Wisconsin in the NCAA championship. All three left their marks on their final BU weekend, as did graduate student Catherine Ward, despite falling short of what would have been the first national championship in program history.
“We do walk out of here with a pretty nice trophy and while there’s a bittersweet moment to this, I can’t thank [the seniors] enough,” BU coach Brian Durocher said.
After scoring the game-winning goal against Cornell University on Friday, Kirchner’s early contributions to Sunday’s game were mostly defensive. On the penalty kill in the first period, she dove to block a hard slap shot from the point. The puck hit her in the kneecap and Lorms and Cherewyk had to help her off the ice, but she returned shortly for the rest of the game, despite a cut on her knee that she said after the game would need stitches.
Lorms was shifted from centering the third line at the start of the game to playing on freshman center Marie-Philip Poulin’s wing in the second, then back to the third line with Cherewyk and freshman winger Louise Warren. In the process, she won 10 of her 17 faceoffs for a 58 percent success rate. Lorms also nearly saw a shot by junior defenseman Kasey Boucher bounce into the net off of her shin in the first period, but Wisconsin goalie Alex Rigsby turned aside what would have been the game’s first goal.
Along with Warren, Lorms and Cherewyk both continued to forecheck viciously in the third period, preventing the Badgers from establishing more than a one-goal lead until late in the game. Cherewyk also made a key block and cleared the puck out of the zone on an early Wisconsin power play.
Ward, though, was the biggest story of the four graduating players as BU’s only representative on the All-Tournament team, which also included four Wisconsin players and Boston College goalie Molly Schaus. She took two shots – no Terrier had more than three – and hit the goalpost on one, and she blocked several grade-A scoring chances as well as slap shots from the point.
“She’s almost rattle-proof, that kid,” Durocher said of Ward. “I don’t know why, but whatever the circumstance or the situation is, she’s got great lateral agility, and she slithers around out there and sneaks by people and in what looks like a complete jam, all of a sudden it’s out of our zone, and rarely does she not make the right play. We were very lucky to have her for one year. I was hoping she’d be a pretty big part of the program and she sure was, so we’ll miss her greatly.”
In an odd coincidence, Wisconsin senior captain Meghan Duggan was born in Danvers, Mass., while Lorms hails from Brookfield, Wis. Asked in the press conference what it was like to play against her “home” team in the national championship, Lorms took a moment to compose herself before answering.
“I just told my team in the locker room how proud I was to be a Terrier today,” Lorms said. “Yeah, I am from Wisconsin and I do know a lot of those players on Wisconsin, they’re fantastic people above everything else, but I am exactly where I should be, with the people I should be with, after four years. I guess maybe everyone will say it, but that is a unique group of girls, and that will not be the last time that Boston University is in a championship game.”
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