Princeton University Athletics
Nothing for Granted: Women's Hockey Team's Gratitude Week
April 30, 2020 | Women's Ice Hockey
Under the circumstances the members of the Princeton women’s hockey team envisioned when March 2020 began, the springtime would have been about reflecting on a season of historic successes, one that added an ECAC tournament championship to the trophy case for the first time in program history, and a run in the NCAA tournament that, now, we know we’ll never know how it would have ended.
Some would have been enjoying their last spring on the Princeton campus, preparing for all the graduation-week traditions they’d seen other classes go through before them, the Princeton Varsity Club banquet, seeing former teammates at Reunions, Class Day, and finally, officially becoming the newest class of Princeton graduates.
Of course, that will not be how the second half of the Spring 2020 semester plays out. Unthinkable at the time, Mariah Keopple’s deflected shot that landed in the Cornell net to beat the top-ranked team in the country on Sunday, March 8 wound up being the last shot any Tiger took in a game not for six days, as originally planned, but for … who knows how long?
When practice broke on Thursday, March 12, preparing for a trip to Boston to open the NCAA tournament, no one knew for sure it’d be the last time they’d leave the ice together, but now, we know it was.
That’s all in the past now. The recent past, but still the past, and the team members are well down the road of answering, what now?
Among the answers is demonstrating that they know there’s a world far beyond Princeton, and that as abrupt and painful as the loss of their postseason was, life goes on, as do its challenges, especially now.
That helped to serve as the inspiration for Gratitude Week, which ran the last week of April and included messages of support for family, friends and more serving as health care and other front-line workers. It included thanking mail carriers and delivery workers who enable others to stay home, and it included just making sure the players’ loved ones, maybe not nearby in physical proximity, know they’re thinking about them.
“It’s really about staying positive and spreading positivity and keeping the right attitude,” junior Sharon Frankel, who helped to inspire Gratitude Week, said. “We wanted to find some way to translate this value from our locker room to out here in this crazy time. The way that we thought to do this was to have that be a theme for a week, and every day we try to inspire others to show their gratitude and appreciate essential workers and appreciate those who are out there risking their lives to keep everybody safe, and to also show appreciation for what’s good in our lives right now. We’ve definitely found this week to be very important in maintaining positivity within our team, and we’re hoping to spread that to others as well.”
The idea was a thoughtful way to express a value important to the program.
“I’m so proud of our players who are finding ways to give back and show gratitude during this difficult time," Morey said. "While they would rather be on campus training and enjoying the spring with their teammates, they are fully aware of the sacrifices others are making to keep everyone safe and healthy.”
Gratitude, in its largest sense, is about not taking for granted what could easily be taken for granted. The same health care workers and postal carriers who keep society running throughout the year are drawing more notice now. So is the ability to spend time in the same space as friends, something that was a part of that everyday life and is now restricted to those who live in your own home.
It’s no replacement, but in a time when physical proximity has to be minded, “zoom” has taken on a meaning beyond going fast. The Tigers are doing a lot of zooming these days.
“We’re so used to, during this time of year, seeing each other every day, training together and being in our post-season to prepare for next season,” Frankel said. “We definitely have had to be creative in finding ways to make up for the lost time.”
Along with taking classes online, as all students are, the team’s work in overcoming distance has extended to their strength coach, Matt Fleekop, sending exercises that don’t require the equipment they’d easily find on campus. But, most commonly, aside from classes, the video calls have served as a way to keep in touch and make the best of a time when they expected to have screens between them by choice rather than necessity.
“We’ve broken down into smaller groups to zoom call with the coaches. We’ve even started including next year’s incoming class as well, just to try to keep building up (our connection with them), and it’s great to have something to look forward to,” Frankel said.
There is also, of course, the challenge of maintaining optimism for a future whose specifics are far from certain.
“We are talking about next season and we are talking about what that’s going to look like and how we’re going to come back strong despite this challenge, and I think it’s really great to have something like that to look forward to,” Frankel said. “Our team has definitely stayed closely connected. We’re all teammates, but we’re all best friends too, so it’s been really great to be able to see everybody on zoom and still be able to stay in touch.”
