Princeton University Athletics
Tigers Growing Teeth
February 04, 2003 | Women's Ice Hockey
Feb. 4, 2003
By Rich Fisher (Philadelphia Inquirer Suburban Staff)
-Reprinted with permission
Annamarie Holmes' friends were a little confused.
Where did the high school hockey star from Apple Valley, Minn., say she was going to college? Was that Princeton? Not the University of Minnesota?
"When I talked about going to Princeton, people were amazed," Holmes, now a Princeton senior, recalled with a laugh. "They were like, 'Why would you go to Princeton when you could go to the University of Minnesota to play hockey?' I said, 'Well, I could give you a lot of reasons why.' "
The least of which was hockey, because the Tigers were coming off their second straight losing season. The main reason, as it usually is with Princeton, was education.
The Princeton women's team was not a hockey power when coach Jeff Kampersal made Holmes, a defenseman, his first recruit. Kampersal has changed that by selling outstanding high school players on Princeton's world-renowned academic reputation and its cozy campus, which is located an hour from the big-city life of Philadelphia and New York. Now the Tigers (12-6-2) are No. 8 in the USCHO.com Division I women's poll, marking the first time they have been ranked since the poll's inception in 1997-98, although they suffered a setback on Saturday afternoon when Dartmouth beat them, 4-0.
Princeton is fifth in the Eastern College Athletic Conference standings, trailing Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown and St. Lawrence. All but Brown are ranked ahead of the Tigers nationally. Other teams above them are Minnesota-Duluth, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin.
Kampersal has stocked his team with players who have revived a stagnant program, including Holmes; her sister, Nikola, a senior forward; and Andrea Kilbourne, a senior forward from upstate New York.
Kilbourne was a member of last winter's silver-medal-winning U.S. Olympic women's hockey team. Annamarie Holmes was a member of the U.S. national team and played in the team's pre-Olympic tour. Nikola Holmes is the Tigers' captain, while her sister and Kilbourne are the alternate captains.
Princeton is located farther south than any of the schools ranked above it in the USCHO.com poll. The common denominator among those schools is their location in snowbelts, in areas where hockey adds color to a wide, white canvas.
"There's over 10,000 lakes in Minnesota, and it's winter for a long time," Nikola Holmes said. "You put on the skates when you're young because there's really nothing else to do - and you keep them on."
Getting young players from Minnesota to think about Princeton is a challenge.
"As a player growing up in Boston, kids always wanted to go to Harvard," said Kampersal, a former Princeton standout who was drafted by the NHL's New York Islanders. "It's frustrating down here, because up north, its just more of a hockey country than it is here. We fight that image all the time."
Luring a Minnesota blue-chipper out of state was a good start in the fight.
Annamarie Holmes' parents, Ed and Susanne, run a successful law firm in Minnesota. They know what it takes to thrive in the world, and they encouraged Annamarie to think about life after hockey. Little did they know that their daughter's college decision would impact an entire hockey program.
"She's a graceful skater, really skilled," Kampersal said. "I saw her play in Minnesota, and when someone of her caliber takes a chance on coming to Princeton, that was a big recruiting coup. She was my first recruit, and she really put this program back on the map."
Princeton had had varying degrees of Ivy League and ECAC success since it put its first women's hockey team on the ice in 1979-80, but the program was in a down cycle when Kampersal took over. The Tigers went 9-17 the season before his arrival and 13-16 in his first season.
"When I came in, I didn't know what to expect," Kampersal said. "I was young [26], so I had a lot of growing up to do as well. The kids we had in the early days were really good kids, and they helped me out a lot."
They were not all hard-core hockey players, though. Many were athletes or just plain students who dabbled in hockey. Annamarie Holmes could not do it alone, and Princeton went 12-16 in her first season.
Kilbourne, who played with Holmes on the junior national team, arrived the next year, and the Tigers went 15-14.
"When I decided on Princeton, they were kind of struggling, but I thought Coach Kampersal was the kind of coach that could take this program to the level I wanted it to be at," Kilbourne said. "He definitely knows his hockey, and he knows what it takes to be a Princeton athlete."
The next season, Nikola Holmes came on board, despite her initial fears of remaining in her big sister's shadow.
"I wanted to stop following in her footsteps, but Princeton was just an amazing school," she said. "I decided to follow in her footsteps again, and I'm glad I did."
Kilbourne and the Holmes sisters were together for Nikola's freshman season, but the team went only 11-13-5. The next two seasons, Annamarie played with the national team, and Kilbourne missed last season because of the Olympics. Princeton went 13-13-3 and then 15-11-3.
The three stars have been reunited this season, and Kilbourne leads the Tigers in scoring with 19 points on seven goals and 12 assists.
"I think our biggest turnaround came on a European trip during the 1999-2000 season," Kampersal said. "We played teams from Germany and Switzerland. The hockey wasn't great, but they came together and bonded as a team. It was sort of the start of cohesiveness in the program. Slowly but surely, that translated into wins."
The influx of talent has not hurt.
"We have 20 players who look at themselves as hockey players," Kilbourne said. "We didn't have that when I came here, and it makes a big difference."
Princeton's goals are to finish among the top four in the ECAC standings, which would give it home-ice advantage for at least one conference playoff round. Because the ECAC champion does not receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, the Tigers do not expect an invitation no matter how well they do in the playoffs.
"It would be hard for us to get a bid because of the politics behind it," Kilbourne said. "Princeton isn't known for its hockey. It's not a hotbed.
"I think we'd be happy if we were one of the top teams in the league, got home ice in the playoffs, won a couple playoff games, and got to the finals. That would be nice, regardless of if we got in the NCAAs."
One other thing that might be nice would be the presence of a few more fans at Princeton's Baker Rink. While the building is packed for men's games, the women have yet to catch on.
"We're getting support, but not as much," Nikola Holmes said. "We'd like to see bigger crowds. I mean, the games are free!"