The Northeastern women’s club ice hockey team won the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Division 2 National Championship March 14, 2010 at Schwan Super Rink in Blaine, Minn., with an 8-1 victory over Rainy River Community College. The title capped off a perfect season for the squad, which went 28-0-0.
The squad is coached by junior political science major Nick Carpenito, who is also a member of the men’s club ice hockey team. Carpentino was the 2008-09 ACHA Coach of the Year, and this season coached a team ranked number one in the ACHA the entire season. The squad scored more than 150 goals in 28 games and allowed only four goals against.
NU also produced five Academic All-American players and three players on the First and Second All-American teams.
“There would be more Academic All-American’s on the team if it included freshman and sophomores,” Carpenito said.
Carpenito said there were two team mottos for this young team, made up of eight freshmen and only one graduating senior. One of the mottos, perfect for a hockey locker room arousal of emotion, can’t be printed. The other, serves just the same purpose: “Never be satisfied.”
“Some of the games were closer then they look by the final score, like the National Championship game, when the only time we had ever seen coach lose his cool while speaking to us during intermissions,” said forward McKenzie Powers, a sophomore psychology major. Powers had a career and team high of 102 points and made first-team All-American.
The four coaches either are current students or recent graduates. Assistant coaches Nikki Petrich, a 2009 NU graduate, and Brenna Frost, a senior business major, are former Northeastern varsity women ice hockey players.
In only the second season as a club in the ACHA, the Huskies hosted a full roster of 28 women, including two goalies, four complete offensive lines and four sets of defensive partners.
Current captain and First Team All American goalie Chelsea Dietz, a junior physical therapy major, and former player Lianne Aglietti started the club team Nov.
6, 2007 with only four skaters and a goalie.
By March 2008 the club had grown with the help from volunteer coaches Carpenito and Jeremy Schleibaum, and competed in three full team scrimmages.
The 2008-09 season competed with a full team roster and made it to the National Championship in Rochester, N.Y., taking home third place.
Captain Meredith Harclerode, a middler physical therapy and physiology major, and assistant captains Dietz, junior communication studies major Christine Fuchs, and middler English major Mandy Laporta led the team this past season with wins against Division 1 women’s club teams like UMass Amherst.
The team plays in the Northeast Women’s Ice Hockey League (NECHL) with 19 other women’s ice hockey clubs. The league is paired with the Northwest Club Hockey League (NWCHL), which has 10 more clubs, and the two leagues make up the Women’s Division 2 ACHA.
It might be better for Division 2 women’s club teams all around the country that these dominating Huskies are moving to the Division 1 Eastern Collegiate Women’s Hockey League (ECWHL) next year.
“This team has a lot of potential,” assistant coach and junior communications studies major Caulen Finch said. “Moving up to Division 1 next year will be great but tough. There will be lots of battles in the next few years playing stronger teams.”
