Head coach Joakim Flygh5 year, 39–96–15 | ||
Yale University women's ice hockey (YWIH) is an NCAA Division I varsity ice hockey program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Contents
- Coaches
- History
- International
- Olympians
- Awards and honors
- ECAC All Academic
- Hockey Humanitarian award finalists
- Ivy League honors
- New England hockey writers All Star Team
- USCHO honors
- References
One of the oldest varsity women's ice hockey programs in the country, Yale women's ice hockey dates back to 1975. Beginning as a club sport, the program gained varsity team status in 1977–78.
Yale competes in the ECAC Hockey League (ECACHL), along with Ivy League foes Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown. Both the Yale men's and women's ice-hockey teams play at Ingalls Rink, also known as "The Whale".
YWIH participates in Bulldog Buddies, a program at Yale New Haven Hospital that teams children with brain tumors with one of the Yale Athletic Teams. In 2011, they adopted a nine-year-old girl with a brain tumor, she goes to all of the home games and calls them when she is in the blues.
Coaches
The current head coach is Hilary Witt, (she joined the Bulldogs as an assistant coach in 2001–02), who has been serving in the head coaching position since the 2002–03 season. Kimberly Mathias and Paul Nemetz-Carlson serve as associate head coach and assistant coach respectively.
Witt was named ECAC Women's Coach of the Year in 2002–03, and became Yale's all-time leader in wins in 2005. The 2004–05 squad set the school record for overall wins (16) and conference wins (12), earning a trip to the ECAC semifinals for the first time. The 2007–08 team broke the school record for goals in a season with 96 and finished with the second-most wins in school history, 15.
History
Yale University debuted its women’s ice hockey program on December 9, 1975. Its first match was versus Choate-Rosemary Hall. The Bulldogs prevailed by a 5–3 tally. Two years later, the Bulldogs hockey program would attain varsity status.
Laurie Belliveau played for Yale from 1994–1998. In four years, she participated in 98 games. Statistically, she logged 5,809 minutes, recorded 4,262 saves, and registered a .911 save percentage while posting a 4.32 goals against average. She has averaged more than 43 saves per game. In 1994–95, Belliveau became the first freshman in any sport to earn Ivy League Player of the Year honors. During the season, she made an ECAC record 78 saves in a game. The opponent was the Providence Friars women's ice hockey program.
In 1998, Laurie Belliveau was one of two Ivy League players named first team All-Americans. This was the first time that Ivy League women's hockey players were bestowed such an honor. On April 3, 2011 former Yale player Mandi Schwartz succumbed to recurrent acute myeloid leukemia at age 23. She was a forward on Yale's women's hockey team and had a string of 73 consecutive games played.
In April 2011, the Yale Bulldogs introduced the Mandi Schwartz Award. The award is given in acknowledgement of a Yale Bulldog player’s courage, grit and determination. Aleca Hughes was named as the first winner of the award.