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Gretchen Dann <\/p>\nAmherst College women\u2019s hockey coach Jeff Murphy was recently discussing Gretchen Dann, the Mammoths\u2019 All-American defender, and paused to ponder life without the Hanover native during the coming seasons.<\/p>\n
Gretchen Dann <\/p>\n
The Kimball Union Academy graduate will soon earn a diploma from her Massachusetts college and head off to work in the advertising media world, leaving Murphy without his star rearguard but grateful for her presence in his life overall.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the rest of my life, I can pick up the phone and talk to Gretchen Dann,\u201d Murphy mused. \u201cWhat a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Needless to say, not all college coaches wax so wonderfully about their departing players. The game\u2019s stakes and demands seem to grow every year, heaping on pressure that can leave everyone exhausted and sometimes at odds with one another.<\/p>\n
Not so with Murphy or Dann, whose collaboration helped Amherst reach the NCAA Division III finals three times during the last four seasons. That none of those campaigns resulted in a national title surely stings, but they were substantive and fun nonetheless. The Mammoths (21-3-6) lost the championship game at Wisconsin-River Falls for a second consecutive season last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a locker room of love and you have to add to that culture, because it\u2019s how we win,\u201d said Dann, who led Amherst in goals with 15. \u201cWe hold each other accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dann grew up in a family unfamiliar with hockey before she hit the ice. By age 12, however, she was playing on a Hanover Wild boys team coached by former Dartmouth College star and coach Judy Parish Oberting. Dann recalls her coach letting out a whoop when Dann dropped a Cardigan Mountain School opponent with a mid-ice body check.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a foot taller than me but I laid him out,\u201d Dann recalled with a laugh. \u201cJudy had told me on the bench I needed to be more physical and when I was skating to the penalty box I heard her shout \u2018That\u2019s my girl!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Dann decided playing at Hanover High wouldn\u2019t best suit her goal of reaching college hockey, so she became a four-year day student at KUA, where she played for former Dartmouth coach Mark Hudak her first two years. She also skated for Massachusetts club teams before and after the prep school season. Still, she describes herself as a late bloomer and never one who caught top-tier Division I recruiters\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first it was a bitter pill to swallow because I expect so highly of myself,\u201d Dann said of failing to reach the Ivy League, where her parents were both athletes. \u201cBut I wanted to win hockey games, not lose them at a lower level just to say I played Division I.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to be the best possible player and person I could be and Amherst could give me that. It\u2019s turned out to be incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
So were the Mammoths\u2019 results. Amherst was 90-15-9 during Dann\u2019s career, during which she was twice a first team All-American in front of goaltender Natalie Stott, who herself earned that honor an amazing four times. The 5-foot-9 Dann played in 114 games, producing 27 goals and 33 assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m definitely an offensive defenseman,\u201d said Dann, who played for a team that pressured the puck all over the ice. \u201cIt\u2019s confidence and you have to have swagger to play hockey. Sometimes as girls, we have trouble with that but I figured it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI play within the system but Jeff lets me takes rushes and chances and use my legs to move the puck up the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy said Dann was one of Division III\u2019s five best players this winter but that her more subtle skills set her apart.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s pretty good in college hockey, so the intangibles become that much more important,\u201d the coach said. \u201cGrit, work ethic, the ability to accept coaching \u2014 those are Gretchen\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had seven game-winning goals this season. That\u2019s unheard of for anyone, let along a defenseman. Who does that? The kid who can find the willpower and desire to make a play because they want it so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
An internship last summer at a Washington, D.C., political marketing firm led to a job offer Dann has accepted. She pondered playing professionally in Europe but decided she couldn\u2019t pass up such a good employment opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cHockey\u2019s the love of my life,\u201d the 22-year old said. \u201cHaving my career end feels like I\u2019m losing part of myself and I haven\u2019t quite processed it. But I think about coaching all the time and once the upcoming election cycle is over I\u2019m going to look into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy, whose 9-year old daughter is devoted to Dann and who trades homemade bracelets with her favorite Mammoth, said his player will translate her hockey stardom into the working world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever she pursues, she\u2019ll excel at it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t get any better than being around her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@aol.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amherst College women\u2019s hockey coach Jeff Murphy was recently discussing Gretchen Dann, the Mammoths\u2019 All-American defender, and paused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[49329,5,36777,61886,23240],"class_list":["post-540705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hockey","tag-hanover-nh","tag-hockey","tag-homecenterpiece1","tag-kimball-union-academy","tag-latest-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116347842260622451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}