Sophomore forward Brigitte Aube might love hockey more than anyone. Despite devastating injuries that pulled her out of the game for four years, she always believed playing Division I hockey was possible. Now, she’s one of the only club hockey players to ever walk onto the No. 9 Northeastern women’s hockey team. 

“Even your craziest possible dreams can possibly come true,” Aube said. “I still pinch myself to this day, because I can’t believe that this is really happening to me, because it was that unrealistic.”

Raised in Avon, Conn., Aube was born into the sport. “Once I put skates on, [hockey] just became the love of my life,” she said. 

She made the women’s hockey team at the prestigious Loomis Chaffee School out of middle school and was perfectly positioned to achieve her lifelong dream of playing Division 1 hockey. 

“It’s never not been on my mind,” she said.  

But her coach at Loomis Chaffee didn’t get to see her play for years. A devastating ACL injury before her freshman year of high school took her out of the game, and her knee never properly recovered. She had a second surgery, then a third. 

Her doctors tried to convince her to give up on the Division 1 dream and to aim for a better quality of life.

Aube recalled what many parents on her high school team told her: “‘If any other kid I knew went through what you went through — with the amount of surgeries that you have and four years of straight rehab for the same knee —  they would have quit by now,’” Aube said.  

Still, she stayed on the Loomis Chaffee team for all four years as a student coach.

“The reason I was able to get through all of it was because I never stopped loving the game,” Aube said.

The times she was healthy enough to play were during the off-season. “My whole high school experience summed up was unfortunate timing,” she said.

In the end, Aube only played two games in high school. It left her with no tape to show a Division 1 coach, no way to prove she could play. She sent emails to coaches all over the country, begging them to take her seriously. She now describes it as delusional, but she never believed she wouldn’t play Division 1 hockey. 

Eventually, she decided to enroll at Northeastern and join the club hockey team, but the dream didn’t die. 

She reached out to people to ask, “What are the odds of moving up from a club player to D1?” They responded, “That really doesn’t happen,” Aube recalled.

Nevertheless, she didn’t waste any time making her mark on Northeastern’s women’s club hockey team, head coach Ryan Schneider said. In her freshman season, she had 10 goals and 10 assists.

“That first game, the [referee] came up to me after and was like this girl, number 10, is going to be the top player in the league. If not this year, then next year,” Schneider said. 

Aube might not have been on Northeastern’s women’s hockey team, but she practiced like she was.

“The only way I could reconcile with the fact that I was on [a club team] and not really living out the dream that I wanted was to pretend that I was a D1 player,” Aube said. “I mean, I trained like I was one. I pretended like I was one.”

Aube became close with the Matthews Arena staff, who let her use the rink early and stay late. “The rink guys always told me, ‘Hey, you keep working,’” Aube said. Anytime she could, she was shooting pucks and running the arena’s stairs.

“I always saw [the women’s hockey team], but they had no idea who I was,” she said.

She was wrong.

“We had noticed her quite a bit, actually. She definitely caught our attention with her work ethic,” assistant coach Melissa Piacentini said. 

Aube had been emailing the Northeastern coaches for months. In the emails, Aube would write that she “love[s] this program. I’m on the club team. Would love to be a practice player with you guys.”

The email she sent off to head coach Dave Flint one fateful late September morning was normal routine for her. But this time, everything was different.

Within minutes, she got a text from associate head coach Nick Carpenito to meet him at Matthews Arena. A player had just left the team, and they needed someone to fill out the roster. They offered the spot to Aube that day.

“I could not explain to you how starstruck I was and unable to speak,” Aube said. She was on the team roster by Friday.

“My mom was crying, my dad was crying, everyone was crying. It’s just like they know how much this has been just encapsulating my mind for however long I’ve been here, for however long before,” Aube said.

At the next club practice, she pulled Schneider and the captains aside to tell them the news. 

“We were just first, taken aback and second, obviously, like, super proud. There’s no one who deserves [the spot] more than her,” Schneider said. 

Her club teammates knew this was her dream.

“They couldn’t have been more happy for me,” Aube said.

Schneider described Aube as an offensive powerhouse who’s able to look two or three steps ahead to set up opportunities. 

Now, Aube is getting acclimated to the varsity team. While she hasn’t suited up yet, she’s ready to work hard until she does. 

“She’s just got a great foundation, and since she’s joined our team, she’s developed a lot on the ice,” Piacentini said. “She’s always asking questions, and she wants to get better, so it’s something that is good for all the players to see.” 

Captain and senior forward Lily Shannon remembers pausing the music of a weight room session to introduce Aube. “Everyone was so happy. They [were] like cheering, they were like, ‘No way, let’s go!’” she said. 

After getting the playbook, Aube fit right in. 

“She was able to get right into the systems that we have. She’s one of the hardest-working people on the team. She’s out there grinding, and she’s competing right with us. And I think that shows a lot as the type of person she is,” Shannon said.

Aube reached a seemingly unachievable milestone by making the Division 1 team. She’s not resting until she can wear her jersey on game day.

“One day, I would dream to wear that jersey on the ice and play for the school. To do that in any capacity, that would be probably the highlight of my life,” Aube said. “Having that goal in mind just so excites me, it keeps me going, wakes me up in the morning.”

After holding on to the dream for so long, Aube is convinced that anything is possible.

“People did not even think I was gonna play hockey again,” Aube said. “The amount of training that I did to get to where I am now, that can only be fueled by a dream like that. That’s what I would tell [my younger self], ‘Don’t give up and keep being delusional.’”