Sarah Choate, a sophomore from Chicago, Illinois, is one of our most determined players both on and off the ice. With this being her second year playing for Villanova, she has opened up immensely as a player and a teammate. Sarah is a hard-working girl, as a Physics major, participant in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC), and defensewoman for Villanova.

This year I had the privilege of playing with Sarah as her defense partner. This being my first year playing defense, transitioning from forward, I needed a lot of help learning the ropes (it is not as easy as it may look!). Sarah took me under her wing, helped keep my confidence up, joked around with me and shared the triumphs and losses of the game with me. Although I am a year older than Sarah, I still look up to her.

Sarah plays through the pain of her recent knee injury, due to her passion for the game and for her teammates. Her performance on the ice never fails to amaze the team, from when she shuts down a one on one, clears the puck in a sticky situation, or rips a shot from the blue line to score a goal. She always has something positive to say, and is my favorite person to share a laugh with during a game or practice.

For the past four years, Erin Lyons has been a constant on Virginia’s blue line, so it is no stretch to dub her as this season’s “Outstanding Defense woman.” Erin led the defense in points (her backhand is to be admired) and truly is the heart of the team; she has never missed a team practice or game (not even when she suffered a broken finger), and is always an upbeat presence, whether it is during a team scrimmage or at a team dinner. “Nugget” will be missed next year.

Celina was a part of our Freshman 4 for defense.  We graduated our entire defensive core and needed to build our team defense with freshman.  They came together very well.  But leading the group was Celina.  Celina understood our needs and her skills and willingness to learn the system and work with everyone was very helpful.  She worked hard and quietly led the group in scoring.  She was good strong and tenacious defender who worked hard and helped the team make it back to our 4th consecutive championship game.  

Playing defense for a team with seven skaters is no enviable task, especially when you have such an attack-minded philosophy as Emily does, but her style was perfect for what we asked. Her puck-movement skills meant a breakout was only one pass away, and her ability to create offense for herself and the team was vital.

But as an actual defenseman, her skills were hard to beat. She had keen special awareness and used every bit of her slight frame to keep herself between the puck-carrier and the goal, all while probably playing 50 minutes per game. Defense on a small team is a hard job, but Emily made it look easy.

Trisha worked really hard to learn how to play defense this year. She was always in the corner battling for the puck and made some good key plays for the team.