Suny Oswego: Hitting the ice after break

The first half of this season was definitely not what we were hoping our season would be like. Winter break gave us all an opportunity to reflect on the past couple months and begin to prepare for the rest of our upcoming games. We had about a month and a half to relax a little bit, and spend some quality time with our families and friends from home.

My break however, gave me a chance to work a mini two-day version of the hockey camp I work for during the summer, except this time I wasn’t travelling all over the country. The camp was out of my childhood rink. This made me think back to all of the training and tough games I had played not only at that rink, but throughout the years on that team. I didn’t only think about the negatives though. I also thought about some of the most influential people in my life, and how they have impacted my hockey career. They helped me fall in love with the game. They were part of the reason I put up with the strenuous workouts, the late night practices, and the long car rides—all just to play the game that I loved on the weekends.

Thinking about all of this put me in the mindset that coming back from winter break was like beginning a new season. We had a couple of girls join the team this semester so things would be different on and off the ice.

Before our first practice this season, we opened the lines of communication between the coaches, captains, and players. We talked as a team about what went wrong last season and how we can possibly prevent that from happening again. We all agreed that it was important that we were starting this half of the season off with a good mindset. In addition, we also dedicated the first practice back to conditioning drills for the girls who were not as fortunate as other who were able to continue training during break. The rest of the practices that week seemed to run smoothly, with everyone arriving safely, even in the midst of the polar vortex storm that hit.

Our first game back after this month and a half long break was a scrimmage against Rochester Institute of Technology, where we were able to put up ten points and work on some of the things we had been doing in practices. This game was a great start to this half of the season, and hopefully the momentum from this game will carry through to our next couple of league games!