With the weather turning colder and winter approaching, this can only mean one thing; winter sports are coming. With the refreshing sound of skates against ice and pucks hitting sticks, the girls hockey season will soon commence.
The WA Girls Hockey team, coached by Jim Geraghty with assistant coach Cory Brown is a collaborative team between Westford, Littleton, and starting this year, Groton Dunstable. They have four new captains this year, Emily Lux and Lauren Alonardo from Westford, and Kailey Hannon and Dorothy Galvin from Littleton. There are no captains from Groton Dunstable since this is their first year integrated into this team.
While some may think a team with so many girls from three different towns would create a divide, the team is actually very unified and there is a strong bond between most of the girls.
“I thought it was a good chance to branch out a bit because now there’s girls that I’m good friends with on the team that are from Littleton so it kind of like boosts your social network a little bit,” Alonardo said.
Last year, the team went 9-10-1, so Geraghty’s main goal this season is to have a winning record as well as make the state tournament. Last year, the team finished top 20 in the state, allowing them to participate in the state tournament, however, Geraghty has a goal of finishing higher this year.
Since last year they had such a rigorous schedule with practicing, they were able to exceed Geraghty’s expectations and win their last seven games in a row. This schedule was incredibly beneficial and while Geraghty is not planning to try any new additional training techniques, he plans to keep the intense playing schedule.
“Last year, our goal was to win eight games because then it makes the state tournament,” Geraghty said. “[…] and so this year, I think our goal will be to again make the state tournament and have a winning record.”
The team uses power rankings, which is a calculation of a teams competitive strength and can be compared to other teams. According to Geraghty, their competitive and tough schedule benefited them in the power ranking aspect as well helped the team exceptionally improve.
To prepare for the season many girls are on club teams or other town leagues, which makes sure they can keep their skill up all year long. According to Alonardo, they have had various captains and skills practices as well as many of them practicing simple skills at home in their driveway during their freetime.
“I play on a half season team right now so I’m doing that on the weekends, but I also, at least for 30 to 45 minutes a day, I go down to my basement and I take shots with my stick,” Alonardo said.
Geraghty asks that the girls do their best to stay in shape and do their best to keep their expertise during the off season so they can come in to play hockey ready at the start of the season.
As for the team in general, the girls often use passing drills and conditioning among other training and found this to be the most effective way to build up skill and beat other teams. Last season, they beat a lot of teams that Geraghty would consider advanced so they plan to build off of this for an even better season than the last.
Although sometimes the team may feel underrepresented and overruled by the popular boys hockey team, they hope merging with another town will hopefully amplify the coverage on girls hockey at Westford Academy as well as bring more fans to the student section.
“The first game that we had last year, since this was my first year on the Westford team, I didn’t know what to expect, our fan section literally just consisted of parents and maybe one student, whereas I went to the boys game after our game and it was packed,” Alonardo said.
The team will play their first game on Saturday, December 9th, against Newton North.
“I’m really excited for the upcoming season,” Geraghty said. “And again, building on what we did last year, we have a great nucleus with great captains and two strong goalies.”
