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A season with many high-profile lows has come to an end, but there were also some positive moments and accomplishments to celebrate as well. Over the next few weeks, we’ll reflect on the good and the bad of the 2015-16 Boston College Athletics season with the BCI Awards and the annual GIF of the Year tournament.
2015-16 Team of the Year: Women’s hockey
The 2015-16 Boston College women’s hockey team came within one game of completing perhaps the most impressive feat in Boston College athletics history. Though it still stings that they came up one game short, losing in the national championship game to the Minnesota Golden Gophers to spoil their bid for a perfect season, everything the team and program has accomplished both this season and in the past 9 years under Katie King Crowley should be celebrated.
The balloting between women’s hockey and baseball for “team of the year” was extremely close, and both were deserving candidates for the award. Both of their stories were well-chronicled on BCI this year, and both were remarkable in their own way.
Time will tell if the women’s hockey team will be able to reload and rejoin the national conversation as they seek, like the rest of the women’s hockey world, to chase down Minnesota and Wisconsin. For now, some rebuilding seems to be in order.
But over the past few seasons, powered by Alex Carpenter, Haley Skarupa, and an incredibly talented supporting cast, BC established themselves as the premier program in the East. In previous seasons, BC didn’t always translate their talent in to trophies, but this season the Eagles broke through, waltzing to the Beanpot, the Hockey East regular season, and Hockey East tournament title.
And when we say waltz, we mean waltz: they posted the most dominant Beanpot performance in recent history, rolling past Harvard and Northeastern by a combined 15-0 score; they then exorcised their Hockey East tournament demons by shellacking BU so comprehensively that the Terriers only barely got one shot off in the first period (and we still don’t think that shot actually went on net).
This was a special team to watch, led by a special coach; we’re hopeful they can be in the national picture again next season.