New England Champions! Girls Hockey Dominates; Riepenhoff Named Coach of the Year
By Suril Kantaria ’09
News Staff Reporter
Girls Varsity Ice Hockey capped off a magical season by defeating a strong Noble and Greenough squad in the New England Finals on March 4th, 2007 by . This feat brings home the New England Championship trophy for only the second time in Choate history.
According to Head Coach Riepenhoff, the success of the team in the post-season is attributable to the strength of a deep talent pool. Yet, the championship victory did not come easily. Throughout the course of the season, the team experienced many triumphs and but also suffered noteworthy losses.
The girls commenced the hockey season on a high note by winning two scrimmages against local teams: the CT Polar Bears and the NEWHL Travel Team. The team’s first significant win came against the New England powerhouse Nobles early in the season. Although Nobles outshot Choate, the Wild Boars pulled away with a close 2-1 win. Coach Riepenhoff commented, “Defeating Nobles was a really big win for us, and it gave us some confidence as we headed into the Taft Tournament.”
The Lady Wild Boars suffered their first loss against Tabor Academy in the Taft Girls Ice Hockey Tournament on December 15th, 2006. The team played “four games in two days, which is always challenging,” explained Riepenhoff. She continued, “While [the loss] was a challenge and disappointment for us, I look at it as a blessing in disguise because I don’t believe in teams having an undefeated season, since you have a false sense of security going into the final game or post season tournament.”
After coming back from winter break, the girls suffered a 1-2 loss against Westminster. Gwen Schultz ’10 stated, “That loss was the biggest low point of the season, but it was an unlucky loss and we didn’t play to our full potential.”
Towards the end of the season, it appeared as though the Boars might not even have a chance to play in the New England playoffs. With only seven games left to play, the Wild Boars found themselves ranked eleventh in New England. In order for Choate to qualify for post-season play, the Boars had to win every remaining match. That is exactly what the team did, ending the season with a seven game winning streak and thus qualifying for the New England Tournament.
While most students were joyously packing to go home for spring break, the Girls Varsity Ice Hockey squad remained at Choate, focused on winning New England’s. On a deserted campus, the fourth seeded Choate squad had home ice advantage for the first time in Choate history.
Before the tournament began, many girls had colds and injuries. Gwen Schultz explained, “Our goalie didn’t practice on the last practice before the tournament because she was too sick to play….One of our captains had to get stitches before tournament.” The team overcame their injuries, said Schultz, because “Coach told us to envision that banner in our rink, and we really wanted it.” Unfortunately, a power outage caused by the new dorm construction prevented the girls from playing on home ice. The team was forced to switch rinks within two hours of their first round game.
The team frantically ran down to the Remsen Arena and Hemenway Rink to gather all their equipment. Schultz described the frenzy: “Security had to lead us into the pitch black locker room with flashlights and we couldn’t see anything, so we threw everything we had into our bags, hoping we got everything we needed.”
The situation at Choate did not hurt the girls’ play in the packed Westminster hockey arena. In fact, Coach Riepenhoff stated, “it drove the team to want to beat [Westminster] even more.” Riepenhoff continued, “Because we lost to Westminster early in the season, revenge and payback were definitely a couple of the words being thrown around in the locker room that day.”
Hilary Knight ’07 played an amazing offensive game, “It was the best I have ever seen her play,” said Coach Riepenhoff after the game. Knight had all five goals against Westminster, going from “end to end without any Westminster player touching her—they were afraid of her,” Riepenhoff explained. Knight led the team to an exciting 5-2 quarterfinal win.
Although Hilary Knight controlled the game, Riepenhoff believes “we wouldn’t have won without the rest of the team on the ice.” Riepenhoff explained that the Choate Girls Ice Hockey team gets a lot of criticism that Choate is all Hillary Knight, but “[hockey] is a team sport and you can’t win with just one player.”
The girls traveled up to Boston to play the semifinal match of the New England tournament against the Hotchkiss School. During the season, the squad tied the Bearcats 3-3 in overtime. This was going to be a real challenge for the team. Riepenhoff explained, “I was a little nervous because we tied Hotchkiss about one week before the tournament, and they have fast little forwards who just find the net.”
The girls used their aggressive man to man defense system, called “the body,” to stop Hotchkiss’s speedy forwards. Riepenhoff affirmed, “Hilary Knight ’07 had another amazing game, but there was never a point in any of the post season games that I said ‘we won’ before the final buzzer… with such a fast paced game, you never know what will happen and can never be too confident.” The team shut out Hotchkiss 3-0, showing their talent and determination to win the New England Tournament.
The following afternoon, the Choate girls played Nobles in the Championship game. Riepenhoff asserted, “It was nice going into the final game knowing that we had beaten them....It wasn’t a game we overlooked because just two years ago we lost to Nobles in New England Championship game.”
The girls would not let history repeat itself. The Choate Varsity Girls Ice Hockey team played a strong all around game, holding the powerful Nobles squad to only two goal. The girls triumphantly defeated Nobles 5-2 to win the New England Tournament.
In addition to the annual New England title, Boston’s Hockey Night crowns one dedicated coach as Coach of the Year. The organization receives input from fellow coaches in New England, and examines each noteworthy team’s season and record. Hockey Night chose the head coach of the Choate Girls Varsity Ice Hockey team, Ms. Courtney Riepenhoff, as this year’s recipient. Riepenhoff poetically stated, “I just think about [the award] and smile and I will for a while.”
The Choate players felt that Coach Riepenhoff was fully deserving of the trophy. Gwen Schultz stated, “Coach Riepenhoff has a lot of energy and is very motivating and approachable. Although it’s only her second year coaching, she is very knowledgeable about the game.” Schultz continued, “The cool thing about her is that she is really young so we got along with her well on and off the ice. Everyone trusts her and believes in her as a coach, so we all love to play for her.”
Coach Riepenhoff explained there were numerous challenges which the team had to overcome this past season. She said, “The hardest thing to overcome was probably that girls in general are very challenging…high school girls’ focus is not always on hockey, they start thinking about other things and talking about other things and their focus tends to shift.” She continued, “It is definitely a challenge to get female athletes to focus. But other than that our schedule itself was very challenging.”
Even though the Choate hockey program has been doing well in the past few years, Riepenhoff believes that “Choate always had a long history of having great hockey and great support for our hockey team.”
Today Choate may be considered the best program in New England, but Choate Hockey alumna and Admissions officer Heidi Howard ’95 believes that it started to develop in the early nineties, under the coaching of Mrs. Kristen Harter. Howard stated, “Kristen Harter put Choate hockey on the map, and since then coaches have been getting good skaters like Angela Ruggiero’98, Julie Chu’01, Kim Insalaco’99 and Hilary Knight’07.”
Coach Riepenhoff believes that “winning the tournament will help get Choate’s reputation out there, and recruiting will absolutely increase.” Riepenhoff also explained the challenges of recruiting athletes to an academically advanced school: “There are a lot of talented women hockey players out there, but the problem is there aren’t a lot that have excellent grades and SSAT scores….I just can’t go out there and blindly recruit hockey players because we need athletes who can handle the academics at Choate.”
Although recruiting is very difficult for an academically motivated school like Choate, Coach Riepenhoff has recruited five incoming freshmen for next year. The team hopes to make up for its loss of five very talented senior players, one of which is a potential Olympic star.
Nevertheless, Gwen Schultz confidently said, “We will work hard to defend the New England title next year.”
