Ingram’s Comeback Earns Her Thumbs-Up From Team

Harvard captain Kalen Ingram had to wait nearly two months to play college hockey again after being sidelined by a thumb injury in the second game of the season. With her return in Saturday’s 9-0 win over Wayne State, the nation’s No. 1 team instantly got that much better.

If Ingram needed any time to reacquaint herself with the Harvard women’s hockey team’s unparalleled speed of play, it wasn’t any more than 40 minutes. In the third period, she scored the first goal of her comeback on the power play.

Ingram made a perfectly timed rush to the high slot when she saw junior winger Lauren McAuliffe holding the puck just onside at the point. In the blink of an eye, the puck was in the back of the net, as Ingram one-timed a McAuliffe pass with expert precision.

“She’s back 100 percent,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone of Ingram’s status. “As she gets more game experience, she’s going to get herself going with more and more confidence. It was nice to see her put one in there at the end.”

Ingram’s decision-making abilities and puck-control skills helped propel her to the national lead in assists per game at the end of last season. She has yet to tally an assist in her three games this year, but Stone is confident there will be plenty of scoring to come, given the way her line dominated possession of the puck against Wayne State.

Prior to Saturday, Ingram hadn’t played since a 9-2 win over Dartmouth on Nov. 9—the first weekend of the season. In that game, she suffered a Bennett’s fracture, a fracture-dislocation in which the first bone of the thumb breaks while the triangular bone at the joint is held intact by ligaments. It’s the most common kind of thumb fracture and it often occurs in basketball, skiing and fist fights.

Ingram’s injury came from no act of aggression, but rather an act of self-defense. As a Dartmouth player crashed her into the boards, she put her hands up to protect her head. The collision jolted her thumb backwards and put her senior season on hold indefinitely.

Ingram was out of action for Harvard’s next 10 games, including its win over then-No. 1 Minnesota-Duluth and a loss to then-No. 2 Minnesota the weekend following the injury. Still, she was with her teammates the whole way.

“She led as best she could off the ice and behind the bench when she was injured,” Stone said.

The cast finally came off in mid-December, and Ingram played some pond hockey and scheduled some ice time with area teams at home in Ontario over winter break. When Harvard resumed practicing on Tuesday, Stone kept Ingram with her original line of McAuliffe and sophomore winger Nicole Corriero.

Adjusting to the Harvard team’s speed didn’t happen instantaneously upon her return.

“When you get into team play everything’s moving so fast, and it takes a while to sort of know where everyone’s going and know where you’re going,” Ingram said.

Wayne State didn’t help, giving Ingram anything but a kind greeting. The Warriors clutched, grabbed and even tackled Harvard players every time the referee’s back was turned. Ingram, often playing down low, received some of the worst of the aggression. The physicality was ultimately not a factor, however.

“After the first hit I was a little tense, but after that, I realized I could handle it, and I was fine,” Ingram said.

With Ingram healthy again, Stone has plenty of decisions to make in composing her lines. She chose to rotate junior Tracy Catlin and sophomore Kat Sweet on the first line with Olympians Jennifer Botterill and Julie Chu, while reuniting the second line from prior to Ingram’s injury but keeping the third line she employed during Ingram’s absence intact.

That arrangement is hardly permanent. Next weekend, Botterill will be absent for Canadian national team tryouts, so stable line combinations won’t come until at least after exam period.

“Tracy’s been playing well, Kat’s been playing well—I think they both deserve the opportunity to play [on the first line] so we’ll see what fits,” Stone said. “Our hesitation is we don’t want to split up these other lines because they’re playing so well too. They’re good decisions to have to make but they’re hard.”

Stone didn’t rule out playing Ingram with Botterill and Chu on the first line. Ingram and Botterill have already played the better part of two seasons together.

“I like Kalen on that [first] line too, but I also like Kalen where she is centering [the second line]—they play well together,” Stone said. “I think we’ve got a lot of options. It’s just a matter figuring out which buttons to push at a given time.”

Ingram, meanwhile, said she’s happy playing with anyone.

Whatever Stone decides, there is no doubt that Harvard will be vastly improved now that Ingram is back on the ice.

“Kalen being back in our lineup, you can’t really describe what it does to your team,” Stone said. “Her work ethic is second to none. When you bring [such a player] back, it just improves everything everywhere. I’m excited, she’s excited and the kids playing with her are really fired up.”

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.