Loomis Chaffee was reeling.
Loomis entered a Feb. 25 road tilt at Phillips Andover with confidence, fresh off a 3-0 shutout over Williston Northampton.
But the rival Big Blue punched the Pelicans in the mouth, skating away with a 5-0 win. It was Loomis’ first loss in over a month. Days later, Deerfield handed Loomis a 2-1 overtime loss in the regular-season finale days later.
“The final week of the regular season was a tough week for a lot of reasons,” coach Liz Leyden said. “That makes you question, like, ‘Are we able to do this?’”
But one meeting with the team’s seniors put those worries to bed.
“The first thing they said was, ‘We are not losing three games in a row,’” Leyden said.
“Our group of seniors really believed that we could do it, so (it was about) just how we kind of convey that to everyone else,” senior captain Annie Schwarz (Fairfield, Conn.) said. “It was definitely a really helpful meeting. I think it just got the energy up a lot going into playoffs, and made us all feel more confident.”
The seniors delivered on their promise for the No. 5 Pelicans.
Schwarz, a Yale commit, scored a pair of goals in a 7-3 quarterfinal win at No. 4 Dexter Southfield. Senior captain Lindsay Stepnowski (South Glastonbury, Conn.) racked up four points (two goals).
“They never complained about traveling to Dexter. They never hung their heads. And they all were like. ‘We are going to do this,’” Leyden said.
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The seniors stepped up again in a semifinal comeback against top-seeded Nobles.
Wesleyan commit Hattie Willard opened the scoring. Trailing in the third period, Stepnowski found the extra gear, again. The Harvard commit set up Schwarz’s goal to cut it to 3-2 before assisting linemate Carly Dann (Hanover, N.H.), a Cornell commit, for the equalizer. After Nobles went up again, Stepnowski answered nine seconds later, assisted by Schwarz. Stepnowski scored the game-winner in overtime off another power-play assist for captain Megan Hosman, a Penn State commit, to send Loomis back to the finals.
In the championship against No. 6 Deerfield, the seniors led the charge one final time.
Stepnowski scored a pair of breakaway goals. Dann cashed in on a rush sparked by a Hosman stretch pass. Most importantly, senior goalie Adeline Roper (Kennebunk, Maine) put some ups and downs from earlier in the postseason behind her. After posting an .881 save percentage across the quarterfinals and semis, she roared back with a stout performance in the championship.
“After our Nobles game, (Adeline) was understandably very upset, but the first thing she said to me was, ‘Well, you know, Coach, this just means I’m going to have a better game tomorrow,’” Leyden said. “In a moment where she was happy for our team's success, but personally disappointed, to be able to have a positive outlook on what she was going to do next is so authentically who she is.”
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Roper, a Williams commit, finished with 25 saves. Junior Easton Pramuka added the other two goals in the 5-1 win for Loomis’ second title in as many seasons.
“Within the first three minutes of the game, one of my coaches and I turned to each other and said, ‘Adeline is back. She’s ready to go,’” Leyden said. “To be able to do that when the stakes are highest is tremendous.”
Roper’s ability to reset was a microcosm of Loomis’ own ability to put recent struggles behind them. The Pelicans’ short memories after the regular season ended helped set the tone ahead of the tournament.
“The look in the kids' eyes when we met, the seniors, and how they were just forward-looking, really, that's when I was like, ‘I think we can do this,” Leyden said. “Truthfully, like the first three shifts against Dexter, I felt really good about that, and that just kind of carried on across those three games.”
For her efforts, Stepnowski finished the postseason with 10 points (six goals) and a second consecutive Most Valuable Player nod.
“This whole season, I knew I had another level I could get to,” Stepnowski said. “I think in the playoffs, there’s another level I get to, in the sense that I’m able to help my team. I don’t know. It just means so much more to me, just to bring a championship back. So, I try and do whatever I can, but it’s just a testament to my line, my teammates and all the work we’ve put in all year.”
It followed a dominant stretch of seven points (six goals) in last winter’s title run.
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Few have found that extra gear in the postseason the way Stepnowski has.
“You think seven points last year was good, and now it’s 10 points. Her performance… I mean, she had four points in a period and overtime against Nobles,” Leyden said. “To be able to turn the tide in the way that she does, no one had an answer for her.
“Her ability to move laterally with the puck and create scoring chances almost out of nothing in different places is an area that she's really grown and developed in. It's been awesome to see, and very scary for everybody else.”
The back-to-back title runs were the perfect finishing touch on the seniors’ masterpiece.
Leyden had high hopes for their potential as sophomores two seasons ago. They’ve backed it up nearly every step of the way since, whether it was three straight Patsy K. Odden Invitational titles, an Elite 8 semifinals trip in 2024 or the two championships.
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“One of the things with them is each year they’ve grown individually but also grown together,” Leyden said. “We were able to see this year how all eight of them played a really significant role in our team's success, and they really each bought into the role they had, leaned on themselves and also leaned on each other. The trust that they were able to develop amongst each other was really palpable.”
Hosman and Willard shut down opposing forwards and moved pucks with the best of them on the back end. Dann slid up to forward this season to form a super line with Stepnowski and Schwarz, who each finished with 110 career points. Roper was one of the NEPSAC’s best goalies in tandem with sophomore Emily Hosman. Elle Pagliaro, who will attend Lehigh, was hard to play against on the forecheck. Assumption commit Bella Zolezzi kept stats and supported the team on the bench after sustaining a spinal cord injury before the season.
“It’s been so much fun to play with all of them,” Schwarz said. “Every single person in this class is so important.”
Stepnowski added, “Our freshman year, we were the eighth seed. We barely snuck into the playoffs. To end it winning twice just shows us as a group how we came together.”
