This week, I sat down with Lindsey Allen ’16 of the No. 10 women’s hockey team before the team traveled to upstate New York to face St. Lawrence University and No. 7 Clarkson University. Before cooling off with two losses this weekend, the team had raced out to a 4-0-0 start, scoring 19 goals through four games. Allen leads the Dartmouth women with six goals this season.
What are your thoughts on the team’s ranking?
LA: Initially we were like, ‘This is a big deal for us,’ but then we kind of thought, ‘Yes, we’re 10th, but we still have a long way to go.’ We’re not going to let this define us. We’re not going to stop there.
What has personally helped you be so successful, especially against St. Lawrence, the first time you had a hat trick?
LA: My linemates. It all starts with them. I won’t take any credit by myself. We all know where we’re going to be, we’re all comfortable with each other.
What are the team’s goals for the season?
LA: The big ones that are there every year are winning Ivies and being ECAC Champions and then the national championships. But, on a lower scale, we have our “KPIs,” which are our key performance indicators. There are seven of them, and you try to win those every game. It’s things like face-off percentage, shots on net and first goal of the game.
What are you looking forward to most for this season?
LA: We were ranked ninth in the coaches poll for the ECAC. I’m looking forward to showing people that is not where we deserve to be and just being at the top of the list and to have people say, ‘Whoa, where did Dartmouth come from? Who are these kids?’ A lot of us are kind of no-names coming into school, but now we’re making our names known.
How did you start playing hockey?
LA: Being from Canada it was kind of how it happened. I wanted to do everything my older brother did. I’ve been playing since I was three or four.
What’s the hardest part of having a season as long as yours?
LA: The hardest part is just going for an extremely long period of time without much break. It’s like six days a week for about six or seven months. It’s September to February or March. That can get pretty tiring, but interim is the best time of the year. It’s just hockey. We get two weeks to go home, but the rest we’re just here playing hockey and getting to know our teammates — it’s the best.
Do you or the team have any pregame rituals?
LA: We have a couple of pregame rituals. We’ve kind of mixed it up a lot this year because we realized a lot of the things we had been doing are tradition, but we didn’t know why they were tradition. After we warm up, we used to all get together and sing this song, but we realized we didn’t really know why. We’re all just singing this song and don’t really know what the lyrics mean so we switched that to our winning song. After we win, we play it and sing it in the dressing room. We also have this soccer ball we pass around the room and each person says two to three things you want to work on that game. It’s a good way to start focusing on what you want to do. There are a lot of us on the team, so I really focus on my linemates and what they’re saying so I can try to help them with what they want to work on in the game.
Over the interim, do you do any special events as a team?
LA: We try to do a lot of team bonding. We used to go bowling, have team dinners, team movies, water pong tournaments, we’ll have some team party things where we’ll build gingerbread houses and stuff like that.
Is there a professional team or player you’re a big fan of?
LA: Growing up in Toronto, I’ve always been a [Toronto Maple] Leafs fan. My favorite players growing up were Darcy Tucker and Curtis Joseph.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
