With the hockey season just underway, the players of the Norwich women’s hockey team have high expectations for their third varsity season. The team lost just three players but gained six new ones, consisting of freshmen and one sophomore.
“I think the season’s going to go well. I think there’s a lot of depth on the team,” said Suzanne Whitaker, 20, a sophomore communications major from Chelmsford, Mass. “Some of the newcomers are going to bring a lot and I think we will do just fine.”
The Cadets opened at home with a 4-2 victory over Utica College.
After a strong season last year and a heartbreaking loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the team is ready for another season.
“I have high expectations. I think we should win a lot of games and I think we should smoke teams. We should win NCAAs,” said Amanda Wilks, 19, a sophomore sports medicine major from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
In the team’s first year as a varsity program, it made it to the first round of playoffs and were defeated at home by Salve Regina University in a devastating overtime loss.
Last year, in its second season, the Cadets defeated Salve in the championship game of the ECAC East tournament.
They continued to the NCAA national tournament where they were defeated in the first round by Elmira College.
“We took away that if you play as a team you can go far,” said Mollie Fitzpatrick, 19, a sophomore nursing major from Falmouth, Maine.
“It made us realize that we could really accomplish something this year and the years to come,” said Melissa Rundlett, 20, a sophomore physical education major from Saco, Maine. “It made us realize that we could compete with the best teams out there.”
“Online people would blog about us and say that it was a fluke and that we shouldn’t have been there, but I think we proved them wrong,” Whitaker said.
With such a strong group of returning players, the team sees no reason that it should not do as well as last year. “It’s not going to be easy; we still have to work just as hard as we did last year, if not harder,” Rundlett said.
“It will be a lot harder because people will be gunning for us because of what we did last year,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think that people are expecting more of us so there’s a lot more pressure. It could be tough but if we play the way we can we’ll be fine.”
“This year I want to win the national tournament,” said Sarah Scardino, 22, a junior communications major from Stoughton, Mass. “I believe that we can do it; our team’s good enough.”