Coach Katie King Crowley and the 2015-16 women's hockey team.
If you’re a coach, you have to look at the big picture, no matter how gratifying the win or wrenching the loss, and try to get your team to see it, too.
But when that loss is the only one of the season, and it comes in a national championship, the task can be formidable.
That was the situation facing Boston College women’s hockey coach Katie Crowley when she gathered her team in the locker room following their 3-1 loss to Minnesota in the March 20 NCAA Championship. Crowley was dealing with her own disappointment, of course, but she knew it was important for her to take on a coach’s other persona, that of a teacher and mentor.
So what do you say?
“To be honest, I hadn’t thought that far ahead – how to handle it if we lost,” said Crowley last week as she sat in her office reflecting on the Eagles’ 40-1 season. “It’s just not what you do. But I knew there were things I wanted them to think about. This was the best season in BC women’s hockey history: We won the Beanpot Tournament, plus the Hockey East regular season and tournament, went to the Frozen Four for the fifth time in six years, and for the first time, reached the final. Moreover, our senior class is the winningest in team history.
“I had to let them know how proud I was of all 23 of them for accomplishing so much for the women’s hockey program. Eventually, they’ll look back and realize what they did, and – despite the disappointment of coming up short – they’ll take pride in it.”
Crowley had good reason to believe the 2015-16 Eagles would be a contender for the national title. Their predecessors had compiled a 34-3-2 record, and went 27-0-1 before their first loss; they fell to Harvard in the national semifinal. Despite losing five seniors, she said, the team’s core – including Alex Carpenter ’16, winner of the 2015 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, the top honor for college women’s hockey – was solid.
“Our seniors from 2014-15 had passed on some great leadership qualities, so I knew we had an opportunity for another big year,” said Crowley. “Sometimes, there’s a temptation to wipe out the previous year, but you can’t always say, ‘Just forget about it.’ We knew we had other goals to attain, like the Beanpot and Hockey East. Also, because of last year, not losing wasn’t exactly something new.”
Hockey is a long season: The team’s first formal workout is the third week of September, when winter seems a long way off. Even as they work on their game, Crowley notes, the players “are taking challenging classes, doing service in the community, and just trying to be college students.” So there’s no predicting when, how or if the team will develop the much-discussed “chemistry” so often regarded as the key to marshaling skills, temperaments and energies into a cohesive unit. Crowley leans on the team’s captains and other leaders to foster solidarity on and off the ice – whether just hanging out together, or perhaps heading off to a bowling alley on a road trip.
Even as they’re getting the team to stay focused on the next game, Crowley and her colleagues know their job is also to nudge these students toward adulthood. “Through the year, we talk a lot about how life is different once you graduate. Mostly, it’s little things along the way. Our associate head coach Courtney Kennedy is really good at this: She’ll do something like ‘OK, this is how you have to wrap the bag the bread’s in, or else it goes stale.’ That gets them laughing, and maybe not taking themselves too seriously.”
The Eagles took their work on the ice seriously, winning the Beanpot – regarded as a good benchmark because of its championship-type atmosphere, Crowley said – by a combined score of 15-0, and keeping the momentum all the way through the national semifinal, when they battled back from a 2-0 deficit to beat Clarkson and head to the final.
Minnesota built a 3-0 lead until the Eagles scored with a little under six minutes left. “After the third goal, I told them, ‘Look, we have enough time,’ and then we got a score almost immediately, so I hoped that would get any doubt off their minds. There were opportunities, but it just didn’t happen. Still, they gave their full effort the whole game.”
The timing of the Easter break this year was fortuitous, Crowley said, allowing players to spend time together and boost one another’s spirits. There will also be the traditional end-of-year team dinner, at which the six departing seniors will be feted.
“One of the beautiful things about this team is how close-knit it is,” Crowley said. “I knew that, even though the final game was disappointing, these young women care so much about each other and would help see each other through.
“And the fact is, coming into 41 games prepared and ready to play, winning 40 of them – and coming close to that 41st one – is something I think is amazing. I feel good about the team’s chances next year, but whatever happens I will always look on this season as a very special one.”
—Sean Smith | News and Public Affairs