Women's Ice Hockey

Your gift to the Crusader Athletics Fund will help to provide a more competitive experience for our student-athletes. Make your gift today.

You showed your dedication to our student-athletes’ journies to excellence, and it was an amazing day of giving. Crusaders across the globe came together to contribute the highest single-day total in Holy Cross Athletics Giving Day history. We look forward to sharing final results next week.

Today, you went All In for Crusader Athletics. You showed the power of the Holy Cross community and committed to the continued development of ethical leaders, champion athletes, and men and women for and with others.

Thank you for your support and dedication to this special family. We wouldn’t be who we are without you, and we are humbled by your generosity.

Our next great moment awaits.

Go Cross Go!

It’s been an incredible day of giving in support of our Crusader student-athletes! With four hours to go, we are on our way to a record-breaking day for Holy Cross Athletics.

Join us in the final hours and go All In for the programs that mean the most to you!

A group of generous alumni and parents have now come forward with a $50,000 challenge to inspire the entire Holy Cross community!

At the conclusion of Crusaders All In Giving Day, $5,000 will be awarded to the five programs with the highest percentage of alumni participation AND to the five programs with the highest total donor participation. 

Find out how your team is doing!

Also, thanks to the Hope + Access campaign, all new and increased gifts to Athletics are matched 100% for financial aid.

Go All In today in support of our student-athletes and their continued growth as leaders and champions. Our teams need you!

May 14, 2021

Today, I’m asking you, and all Crusaders, to go ALL IN.

All year, our student-athletes have dedicated themselves to looking towards the future, growing stronger as individuals and teammates athletically, academically and personally.

With fortitude, we are continuing to prepare our 700 Crusaders to compete at the highest level. Just as they are committed to training and learning, to capitalizing on the opportunities in front of them, we are committed to our vision – delivering a transformative student-athlete experience driven by competitive success. 

Year after year, regardless of the circumstances, one thing remains constant — the strength of Crusaders when we go ALL IN for one another. Every dollar you give today will be dedicated to continuing our tradition of developing champions. And today, thanks to the Hope + Access campaign, all new and increased gifts are being matched 100% for financial aid. 

Together, we are strong. Together, we shape our future. Together, let’s go ALL IN for Crusader student-athletes.

Go Cross Go! 

Marcus Blossom

Director of Athletics

As the school year comes to a close, we are excited to look back on all of the successes we had this year. Our student-athletes persevered through an unknown in pretty much every realm of their lives. They remembered to test three times a week to be eligible to play each week. They spent the first semester pretty isolated from the world off-campus and balanced classes, hockey, not being able to see family and friends, and the unknowns remarkably well.

As you read in my last letter about a month ago, we were able to push forward and have many bright spots on the ice as well. We grew as a team and they took advantage of any opportunity they could to work on their skills and help push their teammates forward. We also saw them in incredibly joyous moments especially when we were competing hard, playing well, and scoring goals. We were extremely proud of this group and are so happy that they will forever be the first squad to compete in the Hockey East playoffs…something they will be proud of as we continue to move up the ladder. Our hope is to play for championships, like so many who have come before them have done.

This Friday we are asking for your support. We are competing in a powerhouse league with a lot of programs that are incredibly competitive. One important way that we can continue to move forward in the league is with financial support from our alumni, parents and friends. We have needs (involving nutrition, video, monitors) that can help us push forward and make us contenders year after year in Hockey East. Any amount matters as we are hoping to hit our highest participation numbers yet!

We’d love your support! Look out for more information in your inbox tomorrow.

Go Cross Go!

Katie Lachapelle

Head Coach

March 18, 2021

Dear Holy Cross Hockey Alumnae, Parents, and Friends,

I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoying the little things during this time. Growing up in New England I have always loved a good snowstorm and we have been lucky to have a few of those over the last few months. As always, campus looks beautiful as we look forward to a little more sunshine and some much warmer weather.  

Our young women had a great first semester in the classroom as they adjusted extremely well to being on campus for hockey and being online for school. They boasted an outstanding 3.38 Team GPA. We had 23 student-athletes earn Excellence Honors (3.0 or higher) and 12 Dean’s List Qualifiers (3.5 or higher). We are lucky to have such dedicated students and athletes and look forward to their continued success in both areas.

We have also seen some great athletic accomplishments as well. Freshman Millie Rose Sirum was the Hockey East Rookie of the week in December. Freshman Bryn Saarela won Hockey East Rookie of the week in January while also being named a runner-up for league Rookie of the Month. Junior Jada Brenon has been outstanding in net all season and made her 2000th career save on February 5th. She is just the third Crusader in program history to hit the milestone and we expect her to break a few more records in her career. At the conclusion of the season, we were given some great news about a few more firsts in program history: senior Antonia Matzka capped off a fantastic season and was named a Hockey East Third Team All-Star and Millie Sirum came in with a bang and was named to the All-Rookie Team and was a finalist for Rookie of the Year.  

We continue to make great strides as a program. We had wins against Merrimack, Maine, and the University of New Hampshire and we see the progress every day on the ice. We have seen our team do an outstanding job under these difficult circumstances staying as one and being there for each other. We have certainly faced a lot of challenges and adversity this year and have seen our team stick together and be there for each other both on and off the ice. While they are limited to what they can do on campus, we have been lucky enough to schedule a few extra team activities to bring them together. We had some extra time down on the indoor practice field where we had team yoga, bocce ball, soccer, and badminton. We had a pretty epic capture the flag (Nerf battle) which everyone seemed to enjoy a lot. Coach Oliver was kind enough to lend us the weight room on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so we could have our group together for some meals.

We have been back in school for a few about a month and a half now and are back to Zoom classes and a few in-person classes. It is nice to have a more full campus this term and to have a little more action on The Hill. We made great strides this season and although we may not have had the score go our way as much as we had wanted, we are playing at a much higher pace than we ever have here and we know that more wins will come. We played some of our best hockey during the final few weeks of the season particularly in our series against Maine which helped us gear up for the playoffs. This season our group was able to get a great experience playing in our first Hockey East playoff game against UNH. While we did not get the result that we wanted, our team grew and got to feel the ramped-up atmosphere of a playoff game. Without a doubt, we know that feeling will stay with us as we train for next season with goals to be on the winning side of the playoffs.

We had a very special senior week to honor Allison Attea, Bailey Bennett, Mackenzie Griffith, Katie MacCuaig, Antonia Matzka, and Grace Peluso. Thank you to their families for helping make it special by sending in videos and pictures for them. They have all played a huge role, both on and off the ice, to get this program to where it is today and we will miss their fun-loving, hard-working attitudes.

I am very thankful for the support that you all continue to give our program and these young women. With your help, we were able to purchase essentials to keep our team fueled throughout the season, a highlight being Normatec recovery units. We were also able to have Olympic Gold Medalist, Brianna Decker, jump on a Zoom with our group to give them some words of wisdom going into our first weekend of games.  

As a staff, we have been so proud of how this team has handled adversity and uncertainty all year with fun, a smile on their faces, and encouraging words for their teammates. They always push forward and make great progress.  

We hope to be able to get together for an alumnae event next year and are looking forward to doing another Zoom get-together in the coming months.

Thank you again for your support!

Go Cross Go!

Katie LaChapelle

Head Coach Women’s Ice Hockey

We are in awe of and so very grateful for our supporters who continue to go All In for our student-athletes. Your generosity allows us to prepare our Crusaders for a stronger tomorrow as they strive to succeed and lead in athletics, in the classroom and in their communities.

Please accept our heartfelt thanks for your support! Holy Cross would not be what it is today without the participation and dedication of Crusader Nation.  

Holy Cross student-athletes are dedicated and resilient. When our world — and in turn, our campus life — changed this year, we adapted. Through challenge after challenge, our commitment to our education and our athletics never faltered. And today, we remain focused and hopeful for the future.

This is why we are asking the Holy Cross community to come together right now in support of our student-athletes.

Whether you make a gift to the Fund for Athletics Excellence or to one of our 27 varsity teams, your generosity helps position us for an even stronger return to competition.

In the face of unprecedented challenges, we know that one thing remains constant — the strength of Crusaders when we go all in to support one another. On this Giving Tuesday, your gift is for our future. With your support, our next great moment awaits.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoyed what was hopefully a nice summer. We are extremely happy to have our young women back on campus. We were fortunate enough (along with women’s/men’s basketball and men’s hockey) to be asked to be on campus so that we could continue to train as a group and prepare ourselves for what’s to come.  

 Our group has been doing an outstanding job with managing their time and adjusting to everyday life back at campus. I applaud them for the way they have embraced the changes to everyday life as a college student and how they have rolled with the punches and adjusted numerous times. I cannot imagine how hard everything must be for them but I will tell you that they have been steadfast in their approach to make this year great. They have been unbelievable teammates and are constantly looking out for each other and also for the staff (which we appreciate very much)!

We are pleased to welcome a new group of Crusaders. Maddie Beck ’24, Lilly Feeney ’24, Vaia Graves ’24, Grace Johnson ’24, Bryn Saarela ’24, and Millie Sirum ’24 have been introduced a bit over social media and I would like to take the time now to express how excited we are to have these young women on board. We are lucky to have Associate Head Coach Meredith Roth and Director of Operations Nick Neary here to continue to push this program forward and we are excited to have hired Devan Taylor to round out our staff. Devan spent last season as an assistant coach at Colby College. Before Colby, Devan was on the other side of the ice as a student-athlete at the University of New Hampshire. I feel really good about our newest members and know that they will continue to elevate the hockey program but also the community here at Holy Cross.

During these uncertain times, I am very thankful for the support that all of you continue to give our program. This year, our goal is to raise $25,000. With all of your help, we have made great strides in the last three years for participation and dollars raised. In my opinion, we are at the top of our league with video capabilities and programming. We have also had enhancements in how we travel and fuel our student-athletes. We need to continue to make strides in supplying skates and sticks each year to the fullest extent possible. We would love to be able to bring in some motivational speakers and have more flexibility in planning our recruiting trips. While on the topic of program needs, it is important to mention a recent change to the giving structure here in HC Athletics. 

We are living in extremely challenging times and I am especially grateful for your support of our student-athletes and our program. Your support allows us to continue to improve on our successes each year and we are extremely grateful to have you in our corner.

We are still waiting for a final word from Hockey East about our schedule and start date and will get that information out as soon as we can. I would like to pass along how hard our team has been working in the weight room and on the ice. As you can imagine and have probably heard, there is nothing easy about what they are navigating each day. They have figured out how to master zoom classes, get in and out of the locker room in under 9 minutes, get their COVID tests twice a week, and have remembered to bring their ID’s for Luth Center check-in for the past 40 days (which I promise is no easy task). We are currently in phase IV of HC’s plan and are now able to get everyone together. The best part of all of this is the pure joy that we see when they get to be on the ice together. The chatter, chirping, and high energy are all that we need to see to know how much they appreciate getting this opportunity to be on campus to train and hopefully play soon.

I am very proud of how our young women have embraced their circumstances and thrived in this adversity. They are smiling, having fun, and growing as a team each day. I can’t wait to see the strides we make this season. We will strive to keep moving forward no matter the challenges. Thank you again for your support!

 
Go Cross Go!

 
Katie Lachapelle

Head Coach Women’s Ice Hockey