SIDEBAR: Injuries Pile Up in December

After meeting with reporters following Friday night’s game versus New Hampshire, co-captain Julie Chu limped off to join her teammates in the weight room, sporting a heavy wrap on her sprained right ankle.

“What a trooper,” said freshman netminder Christina Kessler, watching Chu shuffle down the hallway.

Then, as Kessler, who underwent surgery over the summer to repair a torn knee ligament, met with the press, still wearing her heavy knee brace, several more members of the Harvard women’s hockey team filed by with evidence of physical distress. Sophomore defender Nora Sluzas had a large bag of ice taped to her knee. Freshman winger Randi Griffin held some frozen H‘O to her hip region.

According to Crimson coach Katey Stone, though, such injuries are commonplace in the sport, as much a part of the game by mid-December as line changes and the penalty kill.

“I would imagine that every team is dealing with injuries,” Stone said. “The game has become so physical. Just the speed alone, even if you’re not hit by somebody, if you fall, anything can happen. There’s a greater opportunity for impact in so many ways. Everybody’s battling with that.”

On Saturday, the Crimson completed its most grueling stretch of the season so far, five games in nine days against a quartet of tough non-conference opponents. Two games against three-time national champ Minnesota-Duluth, a stiff midweek test against first-place UConn, and then home clashes versus the Wildcats and Providence this weekend all featured the kind of fast-paced, high-impact action that now prevails among the top teams in women’s hockey.

The parade of walking wounded belied the squad’s success on the ice against Hockey East foes UNH and Providence, a 3-3 draw against the No. 3 Wildcats and a sound 2-0 victory over the Friars.

“We’re playing a little banged up and I thought the kids did a good job mentally to get through that,” Stone said. “They were resilient, which they need to be. We just talked about, ‘You’re never going to feel perfect, it’s going to be a rare occasion when you do,’ and so we battled through it.”

The bigger dilemma for a coach comes when the injury is more severe than a bruise, like with the sprained ankle that Chu sustained. She missed Tuesday’s road game at UConn, an eventual 3-2 loss, and was a game-time decision for Friday’s showdown with UNH. Despite rating her health as 60-70 percent and favoring her right side throughout the contest, Chu was there to anchor the special teams and contributed an assist on the team’s second goal.

“I’m alright, a little sore right now, but it was great to be back out there with the team and get into the game,” Chu said after the game. “The first period, you get a little tentative when you step on the ice.”

Chu added another helper on Saturday to move to 22 on the season.

After Saturday’s game, Stone explained her general reasoning in evaluating injuries.

“First of all, if the trainer says they’re fine, and they’re not going to do any further damage, you just say, ‘Fight through it, you’re not going to feel perfect, nobody out there feels perfect,’” she said. “And it ends up being mind over matter at that point.”

But the mid-season grind affects everyone, even those fortunate enough to have avoided the trainer’s table to this point.

“Five games in nine days...is really tough on all of us,” sophomore goalie Brittany Martin said. “We take care of ourselves, we’re icing after games and whatnot. And as long as we do that, we’ll be fine. And we also get Christmas break, which will be a nice little break there for us, to recover and recuperate.”

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.