The Herald sat down with Yale Women’s Hockey captain Caroline Murphy, MC ’10:

Favorite movies: The Princess Bride, Hook, Miracle

Favorite food: Ben and Jerry’s or Breyer’s mint chocolate ice cream

Favorite Place to Hang out at Yale: Ingalls Rink and the Yale Farm

Favorite Yale Course: Issues in Bioethics

Major: History of Science, History of Medicine

 

Yale Herald: What are your goals for this season?

Caroline Murphy: I would like for each individual on the team to be a better hockey player at the end of the season, and hope that it makes us a much better team as a whole.

 

YH: What position do you play? What does your position do?

CM: I’m a forward, but right now I’m playing wing. I was a defenseman throughout high school, but Coach [Hilary Witt] wanted me to play as a wing, so now I’m an offensive player. The job of the wing is to work the puck out of the corners and create as many offensive chances as you can. The wings are usually the ones who go, go, go all the time; whereas, the center and the defensives have to think a bit more.

 

YH: You played lacrosse in your freshman year. Why did you stop?

CM: I want to give my all to whatever I’m doing at any given time, and the lacrosse team works together the entire year in preparation for a very intense and short spring season. This means that during my hockey season, I would miss all the practices, which makes it hard to assimilate into the team and be prepared to play. Also, making the transition from skating to running is pretty difficult to do within about a week.

 

YH: Why did you choose hockey over lacrosse?

CM: I think hockey was my first true love, while lacrosse was secondary, and I’ve played hockey far longer.

 

YH: What got you into hockey?

CM: My dad loved to play, and some of my earliest memories were of him teaching me to skate in an outdoor rink. One day my dad, in defiance of my mom, came up to my sister and me and asked us if we wanted to play hockey. I thought it’d be cool and fun to put on the equipment and shoot the puck. Then my dad came home with the equipment, so we started to play. But really, in the beginning, I agreed to play just to put on the equipment.

 

YH: Does women’s hockey have a lot of teams to compete against?

CM: Yeah, there are plenty. We’re part of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference, but there’s also the Hockey East and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. And that’s just at the Division I level. Within the ECAC league, there are 12 teams. We play against ECAC teams twice, and we’ll also play a bunch of nonconference games. Of course, though, men’s hockey has many more teams.

 

YH: Despite its growth, why do you think women’s hockey still isn’t as popular as men’s hockey?

CM: Well, first, since I was nine, the sport has skyrocketed. It’s grown five-fold, and that’s pretty neat to see. But I don’t think the difference is unique to hockey. Women’s sports, since Title IX, have increased at an exponential rate. I think the increase in hockey is a byproduct of that. The difference between the men and the women is just indicative of a trend in all sports.

 

YH: What are you proudest of in your hockey career at Yale?

CM: The friendships I’ve made on the team. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon. My mom told me that the friends you make in college are for life. My friends on the hockey team come from an environment where we’re working for a common goal for five, six months of the year. We’ve become a family.

 

YH: What are your plans for after college?

CM: I’m kind of excited about not having any plans right now, although it’s very nerve-racking. Because hockey kind of stretches through both terms, I never got a chance to study abroad. I think going abroad is something I need to do as part of my academic pursuits. I would like to intern in another country. Right now, my friends are interviewing for jobs, but I can’t quite bring myself to do that yet. Eventually I’d like to go to med school. I’m excited, though, because for the first time in my life, I won’t have the structure that comes with high school and college. So now it’ll be up to me, and I want to see how I react to not having that structure.

 

YH: What do you like to do outside of hockey?

CM: I like to hang out with my friends and eat good food. I like to go to New York City for a day and restaurant hop. The trick is to buy something small and share with everyone at each restaurant. I like to relax, watch movies—what most people like to do.

 

YH: How have you been able to balance academics and athletics?

CM: A lot of support from my friends, and I guess it’s something I’ve been forced to do for a long time. I went to a private school where they own you, so I think I learned at an early age how to properly balance all my extracurricular activities.