RPI women’s hockey forcing change
TROY >> The RPI women’s hockey team finished the 2017-18 season with just two wins in their final ten games.
As the 2018-19 season commences, the now senior captains want to change that.
“It leaves no pressure, there’s only up from there,” said Senior Captain Jaimie Grigsby. “But there’s so much room to improve and we are excited as a team and hoping to step it up here.”
The RPI women fell to Minnesota State - Mankato 2- 0 to open the new season Saturday, but the start will not discourage the leadership group for the Engineers.
The senior captains for the 2018 season are Grigsby, Lovis Selander, Aly Tremblay, and Josefine Hansen and each have their own leadership styles.
“I definitely try to lead by example,” said Selander. “But i think that’s one area I need to improve on is to be a little more vocal and
take a little bit of advantage of that trust and respect I have from my teammates that I can call them out and they will listen.”
The captains are working together to not only build a strong locker room, but build each other up as leaders.
“She’s an awesome leader and leads in a completely
different way than I or Josephine, or Aly do,” said Grigsby on Selander’s leading style. “Having us all together works really well.”
Grigsby is pleased with the positive mentality in the locker room thus far and the team’s mentality entering the first weekend of the new season.
“Completely different attitude and mentality,” said Grigsby on the locker room so far in the preseason. “We are ready to make our mark in the league.”
Selander noted the bond the team is feeling early on in the season, both on the ice, but also off.
“We have so much in common and we’re always together,” said Selander. Grigsby added to that. “We spend almost every second of the day together,” said Grigsby. “We have fun together, we study together, we eat together, we’re here together, it’s almost like a family all the time, just 24/7 we’re all just together working on everything together.”
Head Coach Bryan Vines noted the team’s philosophy of being a hard-nosed, blue collar team in front of the net, and the leaders have led the way for that change.
One of our main focuses has been to get to the net,” said Selander. “The past couple years we have struggled with scoring.”
A main change in the scoring department will have to come in special teams. The Engineers were one for five on the power play in the preseason exhibition against Carleton. Last season, the Engineers scored 16 goals on 133 power play opportunities. They want to see that number get better.
“We struggled to score on the power play last year and scoring in general and I’m really excited to have Mark Cavosie on board,” said Vines. “He runs our and coordinates our power play and we have some things we need to work out, it’s still pretty new, but we have a lot of talent on both those units and we need them.”
Vines is happy with the team’s ability to work together so early in the season and sees it as an important facet to the team’s success.
“We work on it everyday it is important,” said Vines. “We have to have each other’s backs and we have to be together and you have to make sacrifices for your teammates and a lot of them did over the summer.”