Farewell to the Class of '08

After the ugliness of the Roger Clemens hearings, it becomes more and more difficult to be a fan of professional sports, where you have to have extensive knowledge of salary caps and anabolic steroids as much as you do the intricacies of the game. It is times like these that I'm glad I discovered the pure enjoyment of women's college hockey, in which athletes who are not going to become professionals but play merely for the spirit of competition are center stage.

This weekend are the last two home games for the Princeton squad, who are in a pitched battle of seeding for the ECAC playoffs. The top eight schools go to the post-season, with the top four hosting a best two-out-of-three in two weeks. Princeton is currently in fifth place, and mathematically can finish anywhere from second to eighth. However, their last four games are against the teams that are presently seeded ahead of them, so they've certainly got their hands full.

Tonight they play the top seed, Harvard, who is ranked number one in the country and has lost only one game. Princeton has a tendency to play up (or down) to the level of their competition, and has knocked off Harvard a few times over the years at Baker Rink. Tonight they will be playing in pink jerseys, as part of a tie-in with the American Cancer Society. Tomorrow is Senior Day, the last home game of the season, against Dartmouth, who are ahead of Princeton by one point in the standings.

I've been following this team for eight seasons now, so these Senior Days can get kind of emotional. Over the years I get to know some of the parents, who are familiar faces at the rink, and of course it's very special for them, considering most of these kids will never play any organized hockey again. All the years of watching them play, from pee wee to high school, comes to a rather abrupt end. From a fan's perspective it's different, realizing that four years of watching a player go by in the blink of an eye. It's easy to remember these kids as freshmen. Where did the time go?

Princeton graduates five players this year. From left to right in the picture above: Lizzie Keady, Marykate Oakley, Sonja Novak, Brittany Salmon and Micol Martinelli. Keady is one of the captains, who took a year off to try out for the U.S. Olympic team. For four years I've marveled at her blazing speed. Oakley is another captain, and a battler. I've seen her have to be helped off the ice, have a bag of ice applied to her back, and then she's back out again. She handles her stick like a Benihana chef handles a knife, and is the leading point scorer for the team and as far as I'm concerned their MVP. Novak, when she came to school, was as thin as a blade, but is now a muscular, straight-ahead forward who always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Salmon is another tough cookie, who seems to be always blocking shots, whether it be with her neck, arms, legs or chest. Martinelli is a local kid, whose father teaches at Princeton. She used to come to the games in high school, sitting just a few rows away from me, and then she turned up on the team. She's been mostly a role player on the checking line, but managed to score her first ever goals just in the past few weeks. Apparently she's on her way to a big-time career in the financial industry after graduation.

This class, as with all classes, will be missed. Next year I'll be getting used to a new group of recruits, and it will go on, but there will always be a sense of loss as each group of these remarkable women move on and leave nothing but memories.