When talking with Samantha Aquino, you can't help but notice she has a sort of confident exuberance that hinges on the bubbly side of personalities.  It's not necessarily atypical of goaltenders but it's not really what I expected either.  Then again, when it comes to hockey, Sam has done quite a few things no one expected.

As conventional hockey wisdom tells us, out of all the kids playing hockey in Indiana, only a very small percentage of them will go on to play hockey in college.  Makes sense, right?  After all, there  are only so many schools and there are a lot of good hockey players.  

It's also generally accepted that if you haven't started playing hockey by the age of ten or eleven, you might be better off chasing down another sport or at least consign yourself to playing hockey recreationally.  That's because hockey requires a completely different skill set (skating) that takes years to develop.

Using these general guidelines, we coaches and program administrators, i.e. "The Hockey Establishment," help advise families and players.  Well, lucky for Sam, she wasn't listening to the hockey establishment and our "wisdom."  In fact, Sam would probably call it a bunch of nonsense and maybe even ask the question, "can you hear my eyes rolling?"  That's because Sam did everything her own way and not only made the Adrian Bulldog's ACHA D2 women's collegiate team,  but she also worked in a partial academic scholarship to boot.

Now, this is already a great story - Samantha Aquino, a female hockey player from Greenwood, Indiana is going on to play collegiate level hockey with an ACHA D2 team.   It's great for Sam and  it's great for hockey in Indiana.  More specifically, it's great for women's hockey in Indiana.  I could stop here and we'd all be satisfied.  But I've only told you half of the story.

In order to paint the full picture, we need to go all the way back to when Sam was learning to skate.  She's always been a rollerblader and while not an exact translation, the skating motion is similar enough that when Sam went ice skating for the first time, she took to it almost immediately.  She fell in love and wanted more than an occasional public skate with her church group.  Luckily, area skating coach, Devan Heiber, had some openings and Sam was able to sign up and work with Coach Heiber on a consistent basis.  It's a standard tale for a lot of Hoosiers - a little bit of rollerblading and a few laps at a public skate and kids find their way into hockey.  Here's where Sam's story is different - this took place during her freshman year of high school.  That's right.  Sam started learning to ice skate when she was a freshman.

Over the course of the summer between her freshman and sophomore years, two critical things happened in Sam's journey.  First, her high school team, the South Stars, invited her to practice with the JV (or B) team.  I'm not sure how much you know about hockey but for a high school team (or any non-recreational team) to recognize the interest of someone getting a late start in the sport and then invite them out to practice is nothing short of amazing.  The South Stars coaches and organization deserve a lot of credit for giving Sam an opportunity, an opportunity in which she would make the most of.  

The second thing that happened is Sam had the courage to step onto the ice with the South Stars, not only as an inexperienced skater, but also as the only female among thirty-plus players.  At a time when much of Indiana is still in the Dark Ages when it comes to women's hockey, Sam charged ahead.  I asked her what inspired her to take such a big leap and she said simply, "I asked myself, why can't I play hockey with these guys?  And so I did."  This is important because it's the first great example of that confidence I mentioned earlier and that confidence is an undercurrent that keeps opening doors in her hockey career.   

After skating with the South Stars during her sophomore year, tryouts for next year's team were looming in May.  She showed up, skated, and made the official B team roster.  Keep in mind, this is only a year removed from learning to skate.

At this point, shortly after tryouts, the South Stars realized they needed an additional goalie for the B Team.  Once again, in her confident, exuberant way,  Sam volunteered.  All the while being asked by her new teammates and friends “why now…and why goalie?”  Sam’s answer, “I play catcher in softball, so the goalie position seems like a good fit.”  Simple and confident.   Now a junior in high school, and with some help from her new teammates, she donned the pads and strode into her first official year of organized hockey as a goalie.  

Sam will tell you that first year was a steep learning curve.  Although there were some similarities between playing catcher for her softball team and playing goalie, nothing prepares you for having to throw your body in front of a frozen piece of vulcanized rubber, traveling at 90 mph.  Still, being on the ice, learning the highly technical goaltender position , and the added excitement of the South Stars varsity (A) team making it to the state 2A finals was enough to  make it a fantastic first year.  

Coming back for her senior year, Sam was determined to get better.  In addition to her normal practices, she began picking up additional ice time and working with youth goalie coach, Jason McGraw.  Coach McGraw had seen Sam around the rink and  offered the extra ice time as well as some pointers to improve Sam's game and overall understanding of the position.  Despite the team having a tough year in the win/loss column, Sam kept working.                          

That work finally paid off when she received a call from  newly appointed Adrian College Women's ACHA D2 coach, Samantha Fallon, inviting her to tryouts.  For those not familiar, Adrian College is a private liberal arts school in Adrian, Michigan and comes with an impressive hockey pedigree.  In fact, the school has seven hockey teams (3 women's and 4 men's) that play between the NCAA and the ACHA.  When Sam got the call, she started doing her research into the school.  As she puts it, "I really wanted to play hockey but the school had to be a good fit too."   Satisfied with what she found, she headed up to Adrian for tryouts and a tour of campus.

What happened next was a bit of a whirlwind.  Once she made the team, move in day was right around the corner in mid August.  Much as she had gone from learning to skate into goal tending in a very short amount of time, Sam went from unsure about her college options to rooming with one of her new teammates in just a few short months.  And the icing on the cake?  The school offered her a partial academic scholarship to sweeten the deal (ACHA programs do not offer athletic scholarships).  So now she's heading into her freshman year of college, rostered on her school's hockey team, figuring to make an impact in her very first season.

Here's the thing, Sam blew away everyone's expectations except her own.  When I asked her what advice she would give to other hockey players and girls making their way into the sport, she said: "Believe in yourself and don't quit.  Don't ever quit."  As I said before,  confident exuberance but did I mention tenacious?  She's shown it every step of the way - when she started learning to skate as a freshman, when she took the ice with the South Stars for the first time, and when she volunteered to move to a position in which she had never played because the team needed it.  

Now that Sam has turned our conventional hockey wisdom on it's head, I believe it's time for the Hockey Establishment to  add the following line to the tenets of conventional hockey wisdom:  "Except for this one time, a girl from Greenwood, Indiana, Sam Aquino, did the exact opposite of what we said and she went on to play collegiate hockey."