(Photo Courtesy of UMass Lowell) “UMass Lowell’s club womens ice hockey poses for team picture.”
Nate Coady
Connector Staff
Down the road from a golf course with actual live goats, there is Skate 3, a hockey arena on Middlesex Road in Tyngsborough where the UMass Lowell Women’s Hockey Team meets for practice every Monday and Wednesday, from 9:20 PM to 10:20 PM on Monday, and 9:40 PM to 10:40 PM on Wednesday. People from the area will know it, it’s in the same building as Roller Kingdom, a popular roller skating rink and arcade.
They are a club team and their captain is junior Jade Owirka, a Criminal Justice Major. “I started skating when I was three. Played hockey since I was seven,” she says. Growing up playing hockey in Tewksbury, she said she had hockey in mind when picking what college to attend.
“Tsongas is a separate company from the school… they rent out all their ice and just give us what they have left,” she says, “Tsongas is only fifty-minute ice slots, so every six practices, we’d lose about an hour of ice time.” Thus, they practice in the charming Skate 3 facility.
The arena itself is home to the United States Premier Hockey League (USPHL) Islanders Hockey Club. The facility boasts “three regulation ice surfaces for all your skating needs” on its website. The place is cold, but that doesn’t seem to bother the Women’s Hockey Team as they run drills. Spectators, bring a jacket. Or two. The women’s team practices on the “Blue Rink,” located behind the two others.
“A lot of our home games are [here]. We have four home games at Tsongas this year, which is pretty good. We only had one home game last year,” says Owirka. The team will cherish those home games in the coming weeks, as the closest travel game is in Springfield. “We’re going to Norwich, Paul Smith [College], which is in Lake Placid, New York… usually two hours per game,” she says. The season ends with the playoffs, sometime in mid-February, according to Owirka.
So far, the team has had one game, a scrimmage against Merrimack College, which ended 2-1 with Merrimack taking the win, “but it was a really good game,” said Owirka.
The practices involve running “skills, we run a lot of drills that we… pull in games… we do a lot of conditioning. That’s kind of what I implemented this year, because a lot of the girls don’t have time to go to the gym. Especially, like, these two hours a week is when people would normally go to the gym… so you have a good workout while you’re on the ice.”
Juniors Bella Babstock and Hannah Connolly have played hockey on the women’s team since their freshman year. When asked why she joined, Babstock said, “I wanted to be part of something when I came to college. I didn’t know anybody and I love playing hockey, so what better way than to play club hockey? Connolly said, “I joined to meet new people, like my friend Bella and now I have a great friend. And my dad made me play.” Both girls have played hockey since they were kids.
Owirka says the team is currently looking for more players. Contact the team through their Instagram, @umlwhockey, or email at UMLwhockey@gmail.com. Watch the UML Women’s Hockey Team at their next home game on October 21 at the Tsongas Center against Rivier University.
