Women's College Hockey Season Ends

The 2007-2008 U.S. women's college hockey season wrapped up this past weekend. The University of Minnesota-Duluth won the championship, beating the University of Wisconsin in the final game, ending the Badgers attempt to win their third straight title. Harvard's Sarah Vaillancourt won the Patty Kazmaier Award, which goes to college hockey's best player.

My interest in this sport is almost completely accidental. Over the years I have tried to take a look at the various sports that Princeton participates in, as the campus is a very short drive from where I live. From the first time I saw a women's college hockey game, I was hooked. First of all, the games are free. Secondly, hockey is one of the better games to watch in person, due to almost non-stop action, and in a small venue like Baker Rink you are really close to the action. I also prefer it to men's hockey, in that there is no checking, so the opportunities for relying on speed and creativity are greater, as players can't simply bludgeon their way down the ice.

I root strongly for Princeton, but over the eight years I've followed them I've gotten to know, by osmosis, about the sport in general. There are only 31 teams in Division I, and almost all of them are either in New England, upstate New York, or Minnesota. Since the NCAA has had a championship, all of the winners have been in the Western Conference (Minnesota-Duluth, Minnesota, and Wisconsin). However, of the eleven Patty Kazmaier Award winners, nine of them have been from the East (with an astonishing six from Harvard).

It's a tough sport to follow in toto, because it's not televised (a lot of schools now have streaming video of the games online) and there's little to no national press coverage. Fortunately there's a web site that carries scores and statistics and keeps someone like me informed, but without being able to see all the teams and players it's tough to speak with a decent amount of authority.

There is a message board on the USCHO web site, and there's a small but devoted fan-base for this sport, with lots of (mostly) friendly rivalries. A good percentage of the players come from Canada, with a sprinkling of Europeans. The three finalists for the Kazmaier Award were Vaillancourt, Meghan Agosta of Mercyhurst, and Kim Martin of Minnesota-Duluth. Vaillancourt and Agosta are from Canada, Martin from Sweden. I've seen two of them in person, and both were incredible to watch. Agosta almost single-handedly defeated Princeton this year, and Vaillancourt was very impressive. She skated rings around the other players on the ice. I watched a video of the award ceremony on the computer today and it was amusing and touching to see these athletic women in mufti, and Vaillancourt shed tears as she accepted the trophy.

Patty Kazmaier, incidentally, was a player for Princeton during the nascent days of women's hockey, the 80s. The daughter of a Princeton Heisman Trophy winner, she was a four-time Ivy League Player of the Year, but sadly died of a rare blood disease at the age of 30. This year Baker Rink was remodeled and a showcase was added displaying her portrait and some artifacts from her playing days. I hope one day that a Princeton player will win the award.