Given this is the weekend Colgate is celebrating 50 years of Women's Sports with a three-day program honoring and recognizing 5 great Trailblazers of Distinction in Colgate women's athletics, it's not a bad time to do a brief retrospective on Colgate women's hockey as well. As we all remember, women's hockey at Colgate started as a club sport and was very popular and successful to the point they were good enough for Varsity recognition. We also remember that Colgate women's hockey like Brown women's hockey had to eventually sue their respective administrations to achieve that well deserved Varsity status. That was a tough and ugly time but all the wounds eventually healed and now seems so long ago. So what initially happened was we started as a Division III program and dominated and then stepped up to Division 1 status and became a proverbial cellar dweller for a number of years.
When I first became interested in the 2000-01 timeframe what I remember most is how the program began to develop very slowly with a smattering of great players coming in one at a time and our team being known for our goalies always stopping 45-60 shots a game and losing. That's how it was during the Wiley years with few changes until Coach Fargo showed up in 2012-13 and we saw great improvement generated primarily by the superclasses of 2014-15, 2015-16, 2019-20 and maybe even this year's class which is really strong. Everyone knows today's recognizable names but I really wish players like Tara French D '07, Sam Hunt F and Kiira Dosdall D '09, Kim Sass G '12, Ashlynne Rando G '16 could have benefitted from the overall talent today's classes contain because they were extraordinarily good players in their day. Sam Hunt from Alberta was Colgate's first great forward in my opinion and could play with anyone. Her favorite memory, and it was huge at the time, was beating Princeton for the first time a Colgate team had done that. Today the North American professional ranks are seeing more and more Gate players join them and become factors on their teams. The great Jessie Eldridge, Canadian Women's team member and headed for this year's Worlds is presently 4th in scoring in the PWHPA Where she plays for Harveys which is leading the league. The PWHPA plays primarily in Canada but also in the US and is essentially comprised of the best from the US and Canadian women's teams with selected others including some of our favorites...Rosy Demers, Bailey Larson, Malia Schneider and Cat Quirion. Those not playing in the PWHPA or overseas are in the PHF, which includes teams from Boston, Buffalo, NY/NJ, Minnesota, Toronto and Montreal. In the PHF Colgate is represented by Olivia Zafuto on the Boston Pride (my favorite ever Gate Defenseman who was also an all-star at the recent PHF event) and Breanne Wiilson-Bennett on Toronto 6 (scored winning goal against Wisconsin to put us in NCAA finals) at this time. Boston is currently leading the league with Toronto right behind. The PHF teams can be viewed on ESPN+ and the PWHPA can also be streamed. Both leagues showcase some great hockey and are loaded with well-known former rival ECAC players and Olympic hockey icons. Both leagues also appear to be getting close to paying living wages to their players so they may soon even be able to support themselves without having to have 2nd and 3rd jobs. I expect more and more Gate stars will be headed into their ranks in the years to come which will only further increase our visibility for recruiting purposes. Can't wait for Nemo to get her MBA from Providence and start banging people around in pro hockey and kicking butts in the Olympics for the next 10 years with the Czechs...