by Jim H. Smith

In the early 1990s, Bantam Field Hockey and Women’s Lacrosse Coach Robin Sheppard was faced with an unprecedented revolution. Unsatisfied by the blood, sweat and tears with which they stained the battlefields of NESCAC during spring and fall, her players were dying to strap on the skates and take up sticks in the winter.

“Probably three quarters of them played ice hockey,” recalls Sheppard, now associate director of athletics. “They came from hockey families. They really loved the sport and they were hungry to play it here. Two athletes, in particular, Braxton Jones ’94 and Lexi Holberton ’96 really pushed for it. Every year they asked why we couldn’t introduce women’s ice hockey.”

Every year. Remember that. It’s an important point, because Trinity’s current women’s hockey program—which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year—owes its existence to the tenacity of those perennially unrequited field hockey and lacrosse warriors who yearned for ice time nearly two decades ago.

“Collegiate women’s ice hockey was pretty much unheard of,” says Sheppard, “but every year my players tried to start a club.” It seemed quixotic. A hockey program, after all, is hard to sustain without a rink, a coach, and institutional support. “Eventually the demands of their other athletic commitments would get in the way,” says Sheppard, “and the club would dissolve.”

Until 1993. That year Sheppard’s players brought ammunition to their insurrection.

After Nagano

Hockey as we know it was formalized in Canada by McGill University students in the 1870s. But women have been playing it for only a few years. In fact, not until 1990 was there sufficient interest in the women’s game for the International Ice Hockey Federation to start sanctioning a world championship. Since then, the gold medal games have consistently featured a clash between Canadian and American teams. Not until 2005 did the American team win.

However, the beachhead for collegiate women’s hockey in America, says Trinity Assistant Coach Lindsay Hansen, was the debut of women’s hockey at the Winter Olympics in 1998. Vanquishing Canada 3-1, the U.S. team returned from Nagano with the gold.

“That was a huge moment for women’s hockey,” says Hansen, who came to Trinity in 2006, after graduating from the University of New Hampshire, where she had a distinguished collegiate ice hockey career. “After Nagano, more and more girls began to get interested in hockey in towns all across America.”

“Two or three new teams are added at the college level every year,” adds Head Coach Andy McPhee. “Three new teams are going to play next year. It’s pretty exciting.”