Leading from the Cage

On the ice, experience can be any hockey team’s seventh player. For Harvard goaltender Laura Bellamy, experience will be the key to success in her sophomore season.

Bellamy unexpectedly became the starting goalie during her freshman year after standout keeper Christina Kessler ’10 suffered a season-ending injury midway through the Crimson’s schedule. With big skates to fill, the then-freshman stepped up to the challenge in a big way, racking up 326 saves and recording a save percentage of .921 and a 1.69 goals-against average in the final 18 games of the season, helping her team earn a berth in the NCAA tournament.

For Bellamy, this year is about coming back, with game experience under her belt, and doing even better.

“I want to win a national championship,” the sophomore says. “I want to build off last year. I got a lot of experience as a freshman and want to use that to the team’s advantage and really be a leader out there.”

Last year, Harvard produced 20 wins and secured its 13th Beanpot championship. This year’s squad currently ranks ninth nationally heading into tonight’s opener.

With the majority of the team consisting of a promising but young group of underclassmen, Bellamy’s leadership on the ice will be needed.

“It’s really different now, because she’s the one,” Crimson coach Katey Stone says. “There’s no Kessler...and so now [Bellamy] is already in this sort of mentor, leadership role.”

Bellamy’s first career start came in a game against Princeton on Jan. 8, in which the sophomore made 13 saves in a 3-3 tie with the Tigers. Her first career shutout, the first of three during her rookie season, came soon after, in a 4-0 win over Union on Jan. 22. During the Beanpot, Bellamy recorded 42 saves in two shutouts and was named the Bertagna Award winner as the tournament’s top goaltender.

Despite her accolades as a rookie, the real gain of Bellamy’s season came down again to experience.

“[Bellamy] came in at the end of the season, which is really pressure-filled,” tri-captain Kate Buesser says. “I think the greatest thing was getting that experience.”

“Getting into games is so different from practicing day in and day out,” Bellamy adds. “Just having a feel for that is so important and not something I have to learn now.”

Bellamy’s experience came with a price: an injury to a record-setting keeper.

But though Kessler could no longer play, she still served as a kind of guide to the rookie.

“Kessler was a big part of my transition,” the sophomore says. “While rehabbing, she was a huge mentor for me. Even when she was out, she was helping me learn the position and the mental side of it.”

Bellamy will need to know both the physical and mental aspects of her position as her team faces some of the top squads in the nation in the upcoming season. The Crimson’s schedule includes six teams that finished last season ranked in the national top 10, including No. 2 Cornell and No. 6 Minnesota.

“You have to have good goalkeeping...and show up every night,” Stone says. “We want to play the toughest schedule we can...because the more situations we can put our players in, the better they’re going to be down the road.”

“Down the road” will ideally include a ninth trip to the NCAA tournament, and the end to which Bellamy aspires, a national championship.

For Stone, in order to reach that goal, the young netminder needs to develop a sense of confidence, bordering even on overconfidence.

“Goalies have to...play with a little bit of cockiness because that makes them bigger, that makes them more imposing,” Stone says. “She certainly has the skill set to be a Division I goaltender. It’s just a matter of her just...having a little bit of an attitude.”

With a successful freshman season, and the experience that came with it, behind her, Bellamy no doubt has the ability to play with more confidence than she did as a rookie who came onto the ice in the place of a senior star.

But for the team to succeed, Bellamy’s game experience can’t manifest itself in attitude alone—the team now looks to her for leadership as well.

“It’s time to take the leadership role,” Bellamy says. “There are no more questions about what the college hockey world is like, but it’s much more important to produce and win games.”

—Staff writer B. Marjorie Gullick can be reached at gullick@college.harvard.edu.