Stonehill’s historic season continues in NCAA tourney
Stonehill women’s hockey is on an unexpected, but very exciting, journey.
In just the program’s second year of competition, the Skyhawks won the New England Women’s Hockey Alliance title Saturday and earned their first Division 1 NCAA Tournament berth. Stonehill (21-15-2) will face Cornell in the opening round of the tournament Thursday at 7 p.m. in Hamilton, N.Y.
The Women’s Frozen Four will be held at UNH’s Whittemore Center on March 22 and 24.
“It feels so awesome,” said sophomore starting goalie Eve Stone, who hails from North Billerica. “Everyone is excited to show the other conferences what we can do.”
It was an up-and-down season for Stonehill, which at one point in the fall had to use defender Hannah Squires as a goaltender when both Stone and junior Hanna Zukow were injured. But first-year head coach Lee-J Mirasolo feels that once the calendar turned to the new year, so did the Skyhawks’ fate.
“I told them, ‘We haven’t quit in 2024,’ ” said Mirasolo, whose team has won eight straight games. “There were a lot of challenges in 2023.
When we were down before, it was a challenge to come back. It is not like that anymore.”
Saturday’s NEWHA championship game was a perfect example of that newfound resilience. The Skyhawks defeated Franklin Pierce, 3-2 in overtime, thanks to Bailey Feeney’s winner. It was their second straight overtime game, having battled St. Anselm past regulation time in their league semifinal the week before.
Cornell (24-7-1) will be a tough opponent for Stonehill. The Big Red are one of the four ECAC Hockey teams to make the NCAA Tournament and boast the league’s Player of the Year, Izzy Daniel (55 points). The Skyhawks boast one of the country’s best defenders in Swedish freshman Pusle Dyring-Andersen, who will challenge the forward’s scoring prowess.
UConn (25-7-5), which defeated Northeastern to earn its first Hockey East title Saturday, will play 2022 national runner-up Minnesota Duluth (20-13-4) on Thursday at 7 p.m. in Columbus, Ohio. The winner advances to play a quarterfinal against top-seeded Ohio State on Saturday.
The Buckeyes (32-4) were a surprising top seed after falling to Wisconsin in Saturday’s
WCHA title game. The defending national champion Badgers (33-5) have defeated Ohio
State twice in the last three weeks.
Wisconsin, with Milton’s Casey O’Brien as its secondleading scorer (69 points), earned a bye to the quarterfinals and will play the winner of an opening-round game between No. 7 St. Lawrence (2710) and No. 10 Penn State.
In their second NCAA Tournament appearance, the Nittany Lions (22-12-3) are coached by Beverly native and St. John’s Prep product Jeff Kampersal, and their leading scorer, Tessa Janecke, played for Wellesley’s North American Hockey Academy. West Roxbury’s Maeve Connolly, a forward who graduated from Nobles, is also a consistent presence for Penn State, playing every game this season.
Two ECAC teams round out the top four seeds of the tournament, with league champion Colgate ranked third and runner-up Clarkson fourth. Colgate awaits the winner of the Stonehill-Cornell game. Sixtime national champion Minnesota, which won the last Women’s Frozen Four held at UNH (2016), is in a position it’s not familiar with: it has to travel to Clarkson for a quarterfinal.