Making the Jump: Hockey's Solveig Neunzert
4/28/2020
Solveig Neunzert has done something unique at Princeton just by showing up.
Student-athletes from the United States and Canada fill the Princeton women’s hockey roster and have done so for years, something true throughout the ECAC, Princeton’s league for women’s and men’s ice hockey. Across the other 11 teams in the league for the 2019-20 season, seven players listed hometowns outside North America, with six coming from four European countries (Norway, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary) and one from Japan. Three such players were from fellow Ivy programs.
Since at least 2006, all North American players have made up Princeton’s roster, a span that ended this past season with Neunzert, the league’s lone Swedish player, joining the team.
What made Neunzert want to make the jump across the pond? There was, of course, the desire to be pushed academically and athletically that made most of Princeton’s student-athletes find their way to campus. There was also something that, while not unique to the U.S. in its existence, is done together here in a way that it isn’t in any other country: The fusion of academics and athletics.
“You have university where you study and you play club hockey,” Neunzert said of the European model.
The adjustments were many for Neunzert, who, in addition to making the move across the Atlantic, committed to the life of a student-athlete at a place that aims for excellence in both areas.
"I think I was mostly concerned about how dedicated I would have to be at Princeton to do the (academic) work and hockey at the same time, to manage both and do well at both," Neunzert said.
Neunzert had experience traveling to North America to compete with Sweden's national team program, and attending one of the U.S.'s oldest universities has allowed at least a feel of home.
"Especially when we’re at Princeton, I don’t really feel that much of a difference, because the campus is a lot like how it is in Europe," Neunzert said. "When you get off campus, there’s a big difference. In Europe, there’s a lot of old culture, which you don’t see as much in the States."
Neunzert has tried to include at least an element of a Swedish tradition in her Princeton routine. Called fika, the Swedish custom is a break that could include coffee, a snack, and reconnecting with friends for a pause from the day's to-do list.
"Of course we had fika a lot, both in hockey and school and just with friends, because it’s always a good way to take a break," Neunzert said. "Coming over to the States, I had to take the time for myself to just take a break and breathe some, where I don’t think about homework or hockey."
On the ice, Neunzert and teammates afforded opponents no such breaks in what became an historic season.
Playing in 32 of the team’s 33 games, blueliner Neunzert had her first career point in her debut against Syracuse, and a few weeks later, had a three-point game with her first career goal at Union. While finishing with seven assists, Neunzert put in her second career goal in the ECAC semifinal against Clarkson, helping Princeton, ranked sixth in the nation, beat No. 7 Clarkson 5-1 as Princeton won an ECAC semifinal for the first time.
With Neunzert on the ice for the final play of the following day’s ECAC final, Princeton kept the historic moments coming, winning the ECAC tournament for the first time in history and beating No. 1 Cornell in overtime in Ithaca.
Princeton won the right to extend the season, gaining an NCAA tournament bid for the second straight year and with a trip set to Northeastern for the quarterfinal, but the cancellation of NCAA winter and spring championships made Princeton’s win over Cornell the season’s final on-ice memory.
The bid put Princeton in the NCAA tournament in back-to-back seasons for the first time in program history, and Neunzert joined a team that had just put together a 20-win season in 2018-19 for the sixth time in 40 seasons of hockey and with a program-best 20-game unbeaten streak along the way.
The 2019-20 team brought back 102 of its 116 goals and all three netminders from that 20-win season in 2018-19, one that saw Princeton outscore opponents by 48 goals.
Neunzert’s first Tiger squad outdid that, putting up 122 goals and outscoring opponents better than 2 to 1. The ECAC final win over Cornell was the team’s 26th of the season, beating the previous best, from 2015-16, by four wins.
“I didn’t completely know how far we were going to go, but we were a great team,” Neunzert said.
Neunzert also took the opportunity to develop her game in her first season with the program, helping a defensive corps that finished seventh in the nation in goals per game allowed at 1.73.
“We have a really good defenseman coach, Courtney Kessel,” Neunzert said of the Tigers’ first-year assistant. “I grew a lot in breakouts and talking to my D partner, using my D partner more than I had before.”
Growing academically and athletically is part of the student-athlete experience at Princeton, and so is being at a place where students from across the world meet. What’s been new about this year has been taking classes home once campus dispersed in March. For Princetonians up and down the East Coast, it’s meant classes in a different location, and for those across the country and the world, the move has meant adjusting to a new schedule, too.
Six hours ahead of Princeton, Neunzert’s new routine has meant a swap from daytime classes to nighttime, and time away from the laptop coming during the day.
“I’ve had to reschedule and do all the usual workouts and studying in the evenings in the mornings instead because all of my classes are 3 to 10 p.m.,” Neunzert said. “I haven’t had to change my sleeping schedule, so that’s been good.”
As it has turned out, a year of expected change led to even more, with Neunzert adjusting to college, doing so as an international student, a student-athlete, and then the added adjustment of taking classes home. Unforeseen, too, has been the ability to be an ambassador of sorts for Swedish hockey to a couple of her Princeton teammates, with soon-to-be graduates Carly Bullock and Stephanie Neatby signing to play in the Swedish pro league for Linköping HC, located about 125 miles southwest of Neunzert’s home city of Stockholm.
“They’ve asked me questions, and I find it really exciting that they’re going to Sweden to Linköping,” Neunzert said. “I’ve played a lot against the players from Linköping and the league. They’re going to have a really fun time.”
Neunzert and the returning Tigers will have to move on without Bullock, Neatby and the Class of 2020, a bigger graduation bite statistically than the team had coming into the season. There’s still plenty set to come back, with 82 of this past season’s 122 goals coming from non-seniors, and with two of the team’s three goalies back as well. Among Neunzert’s fellow defensemen, Princeton graduates an experienced pair in Sylvie Wallin and Claire Thompson, a Canadian national teamer who earned her second All-ECAC and third All-Ivy honors this season.
That expected roster turnover is part of the experience unique to playing for your school, and so is getting to know a new group of teammates each year, both on the ice and as classmates and friends.
“That’s, I think, the fun thing with college hockey that every year is a fresh season,” Neunzert said. “I think if we put in the work, we’re going to have a great season again.”
Just a year in, Neunzert has time to help Princeton make a few more great seasons before her next chapter begins. If she chooses to stick around the Northeast after graduation, she'd be far from the first Princeton alum to arrive from elsewhere and decide to spend a few more years in a city that, for now, is a train ride away.
"So many of my friends want to stay in New York because it’s the big city," Neunzert said. "I’m just keeping my options open. Of course, I love Europe, but it depends on what job I get, what interests I have in a few years."
