Abbie Dymond, Sports Editor
@abbiedcourant
On the New Canaan ice, the girl’s hockey team’s incredible 24-0-1 record relies on the shoulders of the seniors soon leaving the school, but also the freshmen just entering. Camaraderie, bond, and reputation uplift the legacy of the program. The team learns by how the team does, seniors serving as models and passing lessons onto their close underclassmen teammates.
The girl’s hockey team is known for being super close, senior captain Grace Crowell said. “I think that’s why we’re so successful.”
Part of the team culture is being welcoming to the newcomers. “They took us under their wing and taught us what to do,” Nikki Ferraro, freshman goalie said. “This is why I’m not really intimidated because they’ve made me really feel like a part of it all.”
Senior Maddie Kloud had a similar experience as Nikki when she was a freshman. “I think that as a freshman, I was definitely a little intimidated by the upperclassmen, but they quickly took us under their wing and treated us like family.”
Coach Rich Bulan added that one of the main reasons the girls have been so successful so far is their mentality that everyone is treated the same way, despite grade differences. Coach Bulan remembers when he was a freshman and made varsity for football, hockey, and baseball. “It was like you’re a freshman, you do this, you do that, and honestly, I was scared half the time,” he said. “ I wanted to push harder to show them that I could handle it, but there was a certain amount of fear to it.”
Unlike Coach Bulan’s experience, the girls have “made it so comfortable for the freshmen to be themselves, and to push themselves, and to work harder, it’s just a better way to go,” Coach Bulan said.
Coach Bulan has implemented this policy of treating everyone the same on the ice, as noted by Maddie. “Coach Bulan has always been a big believer in that it doesn’t matter how old you are, you just have to give him a reason to play you, so we don’t really care too much about seniority when it comes to playing time.”
This pattern of quickly accepting the freshmen is a pattern that Coach Bulan expects to continue with the next cycle of players. “It seems like for whatever reason with our program, the upperclassmen always embrace the newcomers and make it so comfortable and so family-like that these girls can’t wait to pass that on.”
The seniors have taught the underclassmen a lot, especially what they need to pass on when they graduate. “I get to look up to my seniors a lot, the captains, and all the upperclassmen, as a support, and they’ve taught me a lot,” Nikki said. “They’ve kind of influenced us in a way, so as their leave-in, we have a role where we need to step up.”
When the current seniors were freshmen, they had seniors who taught them what to pass on. “As you grow older, you take on more roles. Just like how Courtney O’Connell and Quincy O’Connell were role models for my grade, we [current seniors]took what they did, and we do it now,” Grace said.
The seniors are also going to be passing down their skills and accomplishments that have been achieved. Coach Bulan said, “I don’t think I’m really going to be applying something more than I’m going to tell them, ‘remember what Caitlin did, or remember what Grace did, or remember what Kaleigh did, or remember how Grace Flatow handled this,'” Bulan said. “I always try to use them as building blocks and examples. They’ve got such great examples to feed off of and to follow that it kind of makes my job easier.”
This pattern has already repeated itself, with the current seniors learning from the seniors when they were freshmen, and now the current seniors repeating the pattern with the current freshmen. “I think that the captains that year were all really great role models for us, and they embodied what it means to put the team above yourself, and their leadership really rubbed off on us, and they set a foundation that allowed us to continue to be successful after they graduated,” Maddie said.
Due to the number of similarities between the seniors and freshmen, having a large number of freshmen on the team didn’t pose a problem at all to Coach Bulan. “I kept the same amount of freshmen this year that I did when the seniors came in as freshmen because this group really reminded me of the seniors, so I had no issue whatsoever in keeping all nine of them.”
Maddie has also noted the similarity between the freshmen and seniors. “Also, like in our freshmen year, the underclassmen this year have done a great job in stepping up to fill the shoes of the graduated seniors,” Maddie said. “I think Nikki Ferraro has especially impressed all of us, she works incredibly hard, and she’s held her own this year, despite the pressure of having to replace the amazing Blythe Novak in net.”
The current freshmen remind Coach Bulan of the current seniors when they were freshmen in many ways. “[The current seniors] were just so mentally and physically tough for their age, and that’s what this group reminds me of. Even the kids that don’t get a lot of ice time, they have the work ethic, they’ve got the mentality. They understand the tradition, that is what I like about the kids now, and they know what’s expected of them,” Bulan said.
