USA Women's Hockey

After taking leave from Boston College last year to train with the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team in the run up to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games, Alex Carpenter was still acclimating to campus life when classes started last week.

“It’s pretty different,” she said during a telephone interview on Friday afternoon. “People are joking that I should go back to orientation because it’s been a while since I’ve been here. All my [Boston College] teammates are great though. My senior class and my old classmates are great at helping me out to get back in the swing of things here.”

After a sensational sophomore season in which she finished seventh in the nation with 70 points and was a top-10 finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award, the daughter of former NHL player Bobby Carpenter took a redshirt year last year because she officially withdrew from school.

This fall she is reenrolled as a junior and getting readjusted to the academic grind of college life.

“They are not bad, I’m in four [classes],” she said. “I’m just trying to get back into it and up to five [classes]. It’s difficult because this time of year last year I was sitting around in my apartment doing nothing.”

But it’s not as bad as it might sound.

“I’m a psychology major and I’m very interested in it,” she said. “It’s very cool to be back in those kinds of classes.”

From a hockey standpoint, returning to Chestnut Hill isn’t so bad either. Last season the 27-7-3 Eagles finished the year ranked fifth in the USCHO.com poll after losing to eventual NCAA Champion Clarkson 3-1 in the NCAA quarterfinals. Carpenter said their goals are set even higher this year.

“We had eight girls out in at the U-22 National Festival. I think we have a lot of skill and talent. We just want to put that all together to be the best team we can be.”

In fact, BC had more players at last month’s National Festival in Lake Placid, N.Y., than any other college team. The University of Minnesota had the second-most players at the festival with four athletes in the field of 69 skaters.

“It was definitely cool to reconnect with my teammates from Boston College because I hadn’t played with them in over a year,” Carpenter said of the Festival.

After the Festival, Carpenter helped Team USA beat Canada in three straight games, recording a goal and an assist in the U22 series in Calgary. She also tallied a pair of shootout goals to cinch the win over Canada in the final game. But the victories didn’t help dull the sting from the dramatic loss to Canada in the gold medal game in Sochi.

“It helped, but it will never make it completely better,” she said. “It was a great start for Team USA. We got off on the right foot there. [But losing to Canada] is not something we brush off. I think if we win in 2018, I think it will [still] bother every one of us.”

Carpenter said she took a few weeks off after the Olympic Games and then 10 or 11 players from the Olympic team vacationed together in Mexico. She also took a family trip to Aruba this summer. Otherwise, she spent the bulk of her summer in strength and conditioning coach Mike Boyle’s Woburn, Mass., gym along with Shelly Picard, Monique Lamoureux, Hillary Knight and Meghan Duggan.

“We’ve been living there pretty much four days a week,” she said of Boyle’s gym.

But even though Carpenter is settling back in at Boston College, she can’t get too comfortable. She will soon leave again, this time for the 2014 U.S. Women’s National Team Evaluation Camp, which will take place from Sept. 12-15 at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine.

“We are really excited for this camp,” she said. “It will be great to have a lot of the Olympic team back together on the ice. I haven’t played with them since February. I think it will be a good test for us to see where Team USA stands with the rest of the world.”

Juggling classes, college hockey, and her Team USA duties will be a good test for Carpenter this year too, but it’s not a balancing act that she’s too worried about.

“We’ve done it before,” she said. “Obviously freshman and sophomore year I was part of the U18 team and I had to do it before. It’s not anything new. Obviously last year was more stressful hockey training-wise, but that’s not to say this year won’t be stressful. It’s just a different caliber when you are training for the Olympics rather than a winter camp or training camp.

“[School] definitely does take your mind off the game for a little bit. My roommate [Annie Pankowski] and I would find things to do [last year]. We did a pretty good job keeping ourselves busy and would get away from the rink every now and then.”