Freshman Lyndsey Fry and her six classmates hope to make an immediate impact on the women's hockey team.

When they first walk into the Yard, many Harvard freshmen are expecting their college experience to be a stepping stone to the future. But for most athletes, these four years can represent the culmination of everything they’ve been working towards. The women’s hockey players are no exception.

“Apart from the Olympic team...this is our NHL,” freshman Lyndsey Fry says. “For most of us, this is as far as it’s going to go. And walking into that locker room, it’s like, ‘This is it. This is why we’ve been playing so long, and this is what we’ve been working for.’”

The seven freshmen of the women’s hockey team—Fry, Jackie Young, Marissa Gedman, Lauren Joarnt, Kalley Armstrong, Gina McDonald, and Elizabeth Parker—are, on paper, a hodgepodge of individuals. Some come from traditional hockey hotbeds like Minnesota and Ontario, while others grew up off the beaten hockey path. Two were high school teammates, while several hadn’t crossed paths before college.

But even after less than two months in crimson, the septet has already found two things it has in common: the seven women love playing hockey, and they love spending time together.

“We just have a lot of strong personalities that are a lot of fun, and they mesh very well,” Fry says. “So it’s just kind of crazy a lot of times. We’re always laughing.”

The freshman class comes in with one of the most impressive collective resumes of any recruiting class over the last few years. Three of the seven—Fry, Young, and Gedman—have played for the U.S. U-18 national team.

“You go to the development camps that so many girls go to...but you never think that you’ll be the one,” Young says. “And so to get that opportunity and be able to put that jersey on was amazing, something you’ll never forget.”

Young and Fry won gold at the 2009 world championships, and Fry and Gedman earned silver at the 2010 event. Though Young and Gedman were never teammates on the national team, the defensemen are no strangers—in fact, they were teammates at the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Mass. for the last three seasons.

The three national team veterans bring an added level of experience to the team in their first collegiate season. That familiarity with high-level hockey paid dividends in Harvard’s exhibition match with McGill last weekend, when Fry and Young each assisted on one of senior Katharine Chute’s goals.

“It helps,” Crimson coach Katey Stone says of the U-18 experience. “It’s just one more transition step that they have that makes it a little bit easier for them to get here, and you’ll see it. They’ll step into roles pretty quickly, because they can handle the pressure and they can handle the intensity.”

Fry and Young both agree that playing with the U-18 team has given them an early advantage as they learn Harvard’s hockey system.

“It was a level that is the same as the DI level, because you can tell that everyone’s there for the same goal,” Young says. “You want to be the best, you want to practice like you’re the best, and the coaches push you to that level, and everyone’s on the same page. And that really helped me prepare for college.”

But all seven of the Crimson freshmen are looking to make an impact this season—and all seven got a chance to skate in the 2-2 tie with the Martlets last Saturday.

“In general, I think it’s an extremely talented class,” tri-captain Leanna Coskren says. “They’re going to be given some responsibilities right away, and I think they can handle them.”

Gedman and Young will help anchor the young defense, while goaltender Joarnt is learning the ropes between the pipes as the backup to sophomore Laura Bellamy.