Before the co-op:
Oakmont Athletic Director, Eric Dawley, shared some valuable information on the girls’ ice hockey program: there were two stints of girls ice hockey. The first one starting in 1998 and ending in 2008 and the second one starting in 2014 through 2022. During the first stint, the team was only made up of Oakmont and Monty Tech, but when it started back up again more schools were added, such as Narragansett, Gardner, and Fitchburg. The program had some success over the years and the players continued to participate until last season when there weren’t enough girls anymore. Going into the 2022-23 season Oakmont’s team ran into a big obstacle: no experienced goalie and not enough players to field a team.
Post co-op:
While this big problem could not be resolved, Mr. Dawley worked tirelessly to find the female hockey players who remained in the program a place to play. Due to the lack of schools in Central Massachusetts that have girls hockey teams, the closest one to us was Leominster High. Before Oakmont joined the Leominster co-op, it consisted of Leominster, Lunenburg, Ayer-Shirley, Groton Dunstable, West Boylston, North Middlesex, Clinton, Quabbin and a few others. Additionally, when Oakmont joined Monty Tech and Narragansett did as well. Clinton backed out. When this news was shared with myself and a few other players, we were very excited. As the season began I knew it would be a good one because we were stronger together than we were separate . Meeting and playing with many new teammates took some getting used to, but it ended up working out in our favor. As the season progressed, so did we and the chemistry was meshing together nicely. For the first time in many years, the Leominster Girls’ Hockey program made it to the State Tournament. Although we lost to Sandwich, we won in the first round and got a lot better throughout the season. We are entering our second season in this co-op and we started with a 4-2 W against Hopkinton! The unforeseen friendships made throughout this transition have been unreal.
Girl from Oakmont who play for Leominster:
Rachel Simkewicz
Chloe Demar
Kay Hawkins
Ashlynn Beauregard
Natalie Alicea
