Anderson and women's hockey look for post-season victories

Contentment.

About 350 years ago a few men settled a town in Massachusetts along the Charles River and gave it that comforting moniker. They call it Wellesley today. Many Princeton students, past and present, have called it home. Take whichever name you like, this is where the hockey career began for one of Princeton's finest skaters.

Sophomore forward Gretchen Anderson, the Princeton women's hockey team's leading scorer, grew up in Wellesley. She was the sixth of seven children in the Anderson family, all of whom took up the blade and skate in their childhoods.

"We had a pond across the street from my house," Anderson said. "As soon as I could walk, my older brother strapped skates on my feet."

But in her youth, girls' hockey wasn't too popular, even in the hallowed ice rinks of New England. Still, Anderson found a way to succeed. She played on local boys' teams until she was 16, having no other choice if she wanted to find competition. For a year, once girls' hockey became organized enough, Anderson played with both sexes before switching to girls full-time at age 17 and playing for Assabet Valley, an all-girls hockey program in Massachusetts.

"It's a totally different game," Anderson says of her time on the boys' rink. "I like the boys game."

After her freshman year in high school, Anderson went to St. Mark's School, a boarding school in southern Massachusetts, where she played out her prep career and helped win the New England Championships as a junior. Not just a rink rat, Anderson also played soccer and rowed crew all three years at her new school. She was at St. Mark's when Princeton began to take notice.

"I played in tournaments [at Princeton] growing up," Anderson said. "There were all sorts of showcases they held to get college coaches to see you. I got letters in my sophomore year and my junior year. Ever since I was thirteen, I wanted to come [to Princeton]."

And she did, applying early to the school she desired.

As a freshman with the Tigers, Anderson was third in scoring with 25 points (13 goals, 12 assists) and started at left wing on a line that featured last year's assistant captain Abbey Fox '01 and senior Andrea Kilbourne, who can currently be seen on NBC playing hockey for the United States of America. Anderson's season wasn't all roses, however — she missed six games due to mononucleosis and, more significantly, the team did not make the playoffs.

The Eastern College Athletic Conference restructured after last season, splitting into two leagues — a Northern and an Eastern division, each of which let eight teams into the playoffs. This year, Anderson leads the team with 30 points (19 goals, 11 assists), and the Tigers are looking at a first-round home-ice advantage rather than a regular season exit.

Anderson, however, wants more than an appearance in the playoffs.

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"I want us to get to the playoffs, get home ice, and go all the way," Anderson said. "I think we can make the final four. I would really like it if I didn't get a spring break this year."

A psychology major, Anderson has begun planning for life once she shoots her last collegiate puck.

"I'm taking it one day at a time," she said. "I'd like, for a couple years at least, to go into teaching or coaching or something, maybe back at my prep school."

She talks on the phone, interrupting a chat briefly to get an update on Kilbourne's game in Salt Lake City. Four years from now, the Olympics will start again. Will Anderson hear her name announced in Italy?

"That's my goal," she said. "That's my dream. I'm going to spend the summer working out to try to get into peak physical condition. That's what I'm training for."

Perhaps for Gretchen Anderson, "contentment" lies in Torino as much as in Wellesley.