ASU Women’s Hockey: Jones and Nash-Boulden began bond in youth hockey, grew closer at ASU

(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)

As kids, Catherine Jones and Jordan Nash-Boulden played youth hockey together in the Phoenix Valley.

Barely 11 years old, Nash-Boulden, the goalie, was too small for her pads and was scored on by Jones often in practice. Now, playing for the Arizona State Sun Devils of the Western Women’s Collegiate Hockey League, not much has changed.

Jones still scores on Nash-Boulden whenever possible in warmups and at practice, always attempting to knock her netminder’s water bottle off the goal. Playful moments like this have cemented a relationship like that of sisters for the two girls.

“She’s personally victimized like two of my water bottles,” Nash-Boulden said, laughing at the fun Jones has with her. “I just had to throw one out, there’s a dent in [another] one. We get along, just not when she scores on me and she only thinks we get along when she scores on me so we try our best.”

Jones played a year of a program known as AZ Selects in 2007 before it was shut down and she moved on to a different team.

In 2008, Nash-Boulden laced up her skates for the first time and played alongside Jones on the Squirt Warriors of the Coyotes Amateur Hockey Association.

That season, the now goalie played as a forward and will be the first to admit she wasn’t the greatest player.

After experiencing frustration with the boys refusing to pass to her, Nash-Boulden switched positions the next season and played in the crease. She has not looked back.

The transition was rough, another fact the Cave Creek native will openly admit. But Jones was right there alongside her.

Jones and Nash-Boulden were once again on the same team in 2009, the PeeWee Greyounds. It was then their friendship blossomed.

Nash-Boulden eventually landed at ASU. So did Jones.

When ASU held a prospect skate at Gila River Arena in Glendale before Nash-Boulden’s freshman season, Jones a senior at Horizon High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, was in attendance.

Nash-Boulden was excited to see how much her friend had improved in the several years since they had last seen each other.

Once on the team at ASU, though, Jones struggled at the start of the season. She fought to fit in and grow comfortable, but it was her elementary school friend who convinced her to stay.

“She kind of kept me here,” Jones admitted. “I didn’t originally want to be here. Jordan’s like, ‘Come on, you can do it.’ She just kept me here basically because starting off … I didn’t bond with the girls at first, but I knew Jordan, so I was kind of in.”

The impact their bond has strengthens the team as well.

“I think it’s been important, not only for the team to work together as a whole, but for everyone to have an individual relationship on the team at least,” Nash-Boulden said. “It keeps (the team) together especially and even just to have that opportunity outside of practices and games to go see some of your teammates and kind of keep up that bond so to have that in the locker room is kind of nice.”

Head coach Lindsey Ellis also said preexisting relationships like theirs benefit team chemistry.

“When that chemistry starts flowing with a few people, it keeps going on and on to the rest of the team,” Ellis said. “With all those different bonds formed before that they had known each other, it helps so much more with the chemistry, on and off the ice.”

In their second season as a program, chemistry goes a long way for the Sun Devils. After finishing with just two wins in their inaugural season, they already have five in their second season of action.

Nash-Boulden and Jones are not the only players on the roster to have previously played together. Nash-Boulden also played on the same She-Wolves and Lady Coyotes and teams as sophomore forwards Megan Mroczek and Erin Rawls between 2012 and 2014, teams that also featured incoming recruit Kyran Lackey.

Mroczek also played with 2018-19 commits Abby Steinman and ​Sheridan Gloyd between 2014 and 2016.

With the roster size growing and the program developing, more relationships will form in the years to come that will put the ASU women’s hockey program on the track of following their male counterparts to the NCAA.

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