Lila Fiorita has her answer.
“The pain just hurts so much more,” she says.
She’s asked whether the thrill of victory is greater than the agony of defeat. Perhaps it’s no surprise the Darien senior feels this way. As Fiorita puts it, she got pretty used to victory, and when she says “used to,” she means that before a Dec. 22 meeting with New Canaan, she hadn’t lost a game in 24 months and hadn’t lost to her rival… well, ever.
So, yeah. When the Rams handed the defending state champions a 4-1 loss the day before Christmas break, that rocked Darien pretty good.
“It was horrible,” Fiorita, a co-captain, declares.
“Definitely not fun,” junior Adriana Gromelski says.
“Losing 4-1 to New Canaan?” dwells junior defender Sophie Beach. “That’s not even a close game!”
In some ways, the defeat really didn’t matter much. It was the fifth game of the season. The Wave were still clearly state title contenders — they had won five of the previous eight state championships. New Canaan had won the other three, so a loss to the Rams was hardly inexcusable. Besides, Darien would get another crack at NC in February, and potentially two more after that in the FCIAC and CHSGHA title games.
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In another sense, the loss might’ve been the single most consequential result of the Connecticut girls’ hockey season. Because this program doesn’t just lose. Fiorita admits the goal this season was to do exactly what was done last season. To be perfect. The rest of the state had its work cut out for it to stop them. The Wave had overwhelming talent and pedigree, with Fiorita — a Hamilton commit — and Gromelski — a Yale lacrosse commit — leading the defensive core and forward group, respectively. They had rare depth; first-year coach Gray Weicker, the former assistant of longtime coach Jamie Tropsa, ran two pairs and three lines all year, with Gromelski — the eventual CHSGHA Player of the Year — running on the second line. And they had comical experience; all four members of the leadership group had already won at least two state titles. All of that adds up to a prohibitive championship favorite.
The only potential cracks, really, were hubris and boredom.
“We came into the game thinking we’ve got this in the bag,” Gromelski says. “This is light work.”
“It can be hard [to stay motivated],” Fiorita adds. “I’ve won seven out of eight FCIAC and state championships that I’ve had.”
Hence the importance of that loss to the Rams, and the crater it left.
“We realized: ‘Oh my gosh, if we keep playing like this…’” Beach says. “After the game, everyone was like: ‘Okay. We can never let that happen ever again.’”
And with that, the deepest, most experienced, most talented team in the land got what Connecticut couldn’t afford to give. A chip on Darien’s collective shoulder. The Wave did, indeed, never let that happen again; they ran the table after that early-season loss, finishing with a perfectly imperfect 24-1 record, winning their fourth consecutive FCIAC title and repeating as state champions. Darien returned to the top of Connecticut for the third time in four years with a 6-1 romp over Hall/Conard at Quinnipiac on March 11.
As for New Canaan? The Rams, upset by H/C in overtime of the state semifinal, never made it to M&T Bank Arena, but the Wave got their revenge with a 2-1 regular-season victory on Feb. 2 and a 4-1 win in the league final.
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Life back to normal for Darien girls’ hockey.
“It’s easy for a team that won everything last year to be like, ‘Oh, let’s just do it all again this year,’” senior co-captain Izzy Haire says. “But it’s really not like that.”
It’s no secret the Wave have built a powerhouse. And we mean a powerhouse. “That past two seasons, we’ve gone 45-1,” Fiorita says. “It’s just insane.” Darien (and New Canaan) enjoys advantages the rest of Connecticut doesn’t. The local CT Ice Cats club program, which the Darien and NC coaches helped build from the ground up, produces top talent and funnels it to Darien High. The school’s nationally-ranked lacrosse team keeps it there; lacrosse is many of the hockey players’ main sport, and Darien’s lacrosse program is good enough to steer those families away from prep, while other programs in the state suffer from prep attrition.
Fiorita admits many think that putting on the Darien jersey is an automatic ticket to winning, and to winning by a lot. The Wave’s sheer talent — Fiorita, a defender, scored 26 goals and dished out 17 assists in 25 games, while Gromelski recorded 35 and 17 — won’t help dispel that notion. Nor will Darien’s strength in numbers. Weicker ran nine forwards in the title game; Hall/Conard ran nine skaters, period.
Still, if you expect Weicker to wax lyrical about his players’ ability, that’s not exactly his first thought when asked what made this group so successful.
“This group of kids?” he declares. “They just worked hard.”
For a team that wins so often, the Wave were remarkably good at keeping their foot on the gas when they took an early lead. Darien recorded nine shutouts, including in the state quarterfinals and semifinals, which it won by a combined 12-0. The Wave jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead in the title game and still scored four more goals. Across 25 games, they outscored their opponents 130-26. During intermissions in which Darien held big leads, the leadership group would tell the team it was actually down by a goal. It’s a classic trope, but the Wave bought in.
“It’s the energy that comes with being a part of Darien girls’ hockey,” Haire says. “We must keep going.”
Darien didn’t handle falling behind well on Dec. 22. But on the rare occasion it trailed in the 20 games after the loss to NC, Weicker’s team was ruthless. It came back from a one-goal deficit to beat the Rams in early February, and when Greenwich scored the first goal in the following game, Darien eventually won 10-4.
Taken at Weicker’s word, there was nothing complicated about this, no formula that only Darien and its resources could extract.
“We don’t have systems,” Weicker says. “It’s just hard work and team chemistry.”
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After the title game, someone asked Fiorita, sarcastically, if she was happy to win yet another state title. You guys just won for like the 15th time in a row, went one exaggerated inquiry.
“And I’m like: ‘Yeah,’” Fiorita says. “We are happy.”
It’s a lot better than the alternative, after all.
