By Avonlea Cummings
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
The Medfield girl’s hockey team has been actively involved in giving back to the community throughout their entire season, both on and off the ice. A few weeks ago, their hard work and dedication to the youth of future hockey players and mentorship was recognized by the MIAA gifted the team with the sportsmanship award this year.
Although the girl’s recognition doesn’t stop there, the Boston Bruins heard of the inspirational work Medfield has put into their community and invited the team to spend a day at TD Garden and participate in a clinic with a Bruins alumni.
This past Monday on March 27th, senior captains Makayla Matthews, and Gabby Curl, were thrilled to have the opportunity to travel again with their team in celebration of the dedication they put into giving back to the community.
“We are like a family, to have everyone back together again was amazing. It was great to have the opportunity to play again on such a big stage like TD,” said Matthews.
Some of the community services the team participated in throughout their season were with programs like Learn to Skate. The girls would host the youth girls’ teams at practices and let the youth skate with the team before games, etc.
“We do a lot with our youth clinics; we do Learn to Skate every weekend leading up to the season and all throughout. We take the Medfield girls' youth hockey team under our wing as well, taking them to our games and giving them the opportunities to skate with us. It’s such a gratifying moment because you see the youth standing there, and it widens your perspective of what you’re paying for since they all look up to us,” said Curl.
During their clinic, the team spent time learning drills and scrimmaging with the Boston Bruins alum Andrew Raycroft. Head coach John Summers reflected on what it meant to the team to be recognized for their commitment to the sport and the youth of hockey.
“A lot of our girls’ volunteer, they raised over $1800 for Breast Cancer Awareness as well, and this is the first time we have won the sportsmanship award. It was cool to finish off our season on TD’s ice, as a coach I couldn’t be happier. At the end of the day, I told the girls ‘Hey we didn’t get to play in the state finals this year, but we were the last high school team to play at the Garden’ it was a great experience for them,” said Summers.
Curl and Matthews reflected on how much impact and influence they have on the girls on how they can become great hockey players too, this is what makes it so special to them as they remember being that age.
“You don’t realize how much you look up to the girls who have taught and coached you throughout the years, one eye-opening thing for us knowing how much these girls look up to us was when we coached them only a couple of times, and then they came to our next game with our numbers painted on their faces. Also going to school and telling all their friends that we were friends with them, it was just so amazing to see how much impact we had on them. We got to get them excited about the sport because they saw how much we enjoy it,” said Curl.
