Fellow British Colombian Jennifer Raimondi also hopes to score often this year, despite being over three years younger than fellow freshman Chu.
Raimondi, the leading scorer for the Steelers last season, proved to the Crimson coaches her renowned ability to find the net, providing an assist against her former team in the scrimmage. Raimondi hopes that the skills she acquired as a member of the under-18 squad will translate to the college game.
Though a large portion of the Crimson talent lies in the forwards, the defense hopes its own outstanding stars will get out on the ice a lot.
“Two defensemen are going to play a lot of hockey, [Jennifer] Skinner and [Abra] Kinkopf,” Stone said.
Though a native of Canada, Skinner attended boarding school in the U.S., where she co-captained the school’s hockey team with twin sister Andrea, who now plays at Cornell. But Jennifer notes that she has no ill will to her now rival sister.
“We’ll say ‘hi’ to each other on the ice, but it’ll just be a game just like anything else,” Jennifer said. “It stays on the ice.”
Skinner is known as a hard working, dominating force in the rink. Skinner played on a boys’ team her first three years in the sport before she was able to join an all-girls team
Kinkopf also has a family history of hockey in the Ivy League. Her older brother, Abraham, is a sophomore on the Harvard men’s team.
The lone goaltender in the freshman class is Ali Boe. Selected as her high school’s female athlete of the year, Boe excelled in soccer, golf and hockey. But standing at only 5’5, Boe finds that she has to compensate for her lack of size with other areas of her game.
“Because I am a little smaller I do need to be quicker to keep up and cover more of the net,” Boe said.
Though this group of freshmen all feel they have unique backgrounds and outlooks, hockey has brought them and the upperclassmen together to form a great off-ice chemistry that has already translated inside the rink.
“I think we’re ranked No. 3 not because we have three Olympians, but because there’s 23 or 24 solid players on the team who can pick up the slack for anyone who’s having a rough day,” Chu said.