(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
Captain (n)– One who leads or supervises (Merriam-Webster)
Imagine a ship’s captain leading her ship and crew out from treacherous waters filled with jagged rocks. Envision the precision and teamwork it takes from the crew and captain to navigate through the rocks before finally reaching the open waters.
Now replace the ship with a hockey team, the jagged rocks with an inaugural season and put a name to the captain as KC McGinley and you have the Arizona State women’s club hockey team.
When McGinley transferred from U-Mass Boston to ASU in her junior year, she found herself the captain of a brand new, untested club hockey team. It would be McGinley, alongside with head coach Lindsey Ellis who would take charge in defining what this newborn team would become.
McGinley opened up upon the transitioning from playing at a school that had a defined structure and playing style to a team that had yet to play single game in the collegiate level. “The girls made it pretty easy,” she says. “But it was the awkwardness of figuring out what works for us [that was difficult].”
Through the awkwardness of working with a new team McGinley believes that “it was easily [the team] with the best chemistry and energy that I had been on… until this year.”
The first season saw the captain and her team experience firsthand the growing pains of being a new team in a Division I club sport. They finished the inaugural season with two wins and McGinley, the only one on the team to wear the “C,” finishing with one goal and three assists for a total of four points.
With the first season under their belt and a year of experience gained, things would yet again turn to McGinley, reprising her role as captain in her senior year of college. Having a full year of captaining completed, McGinley was ready to build upon the successes and failures of the previous year.
One of the major focal points for her this season is improving the team’s communication, something the Devils have focused on heavily since day one. That communication is not always necessarily talking on the ice, but also focuses on the smaller things such as showing up late to a practice or being sick. “You have to tell us when you’re not going to be there… and that communication transfers onto the ice,” McGinley notes.
Being a captain is not always just about mentoring the players on the ice, but off the ice as well. It is living up to the idea that “hockey is family,” and McGinley knows that the 2017-18 season is her last year of playing hockey for the Sun Devils, so this is her chance to leave a lasting message with the team.
“I want this to be a second family. That’s what it’s all about. I want the girls to always have a place to come when they want support. This should be everybody’s escape. And I want this team to grow girl’s hockey.”
McGinley may be graduating at the end of this season, but she will forever leave a lasting impact on the state of women’s hockey, not only at ASU but in the entire state of Arizona.
The ASU women have won more games and McGinley has scored six more points in just six games this season, compared to 17 regular season games last year. Women’s hockey is on the rise in the state of Arizona, and when people look back, it may be McGinley and coach Ellis that are talked about when referencing the rise of women’s hockey in the desert.
