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| Josh Barber |
After a Division III championship last year and the start of the switch to Division I this year, it has been an exciting year to be on the Women’s Hockey team. And for fourth year Biology major Tenecia Hiller, the game is her life.
A proud member and co-captain of the team, Hiller has played forward, a primarily offensive position, in all 30 games this season. This has allowed her to rack up points: Hiller is the top scorer on her team with 12 goals. She also tops the list with 22 points (a tally of goals and assists). This season, she scored a hat trick (three goals) against Sacred Heart on January 18. Impressively, that was her third hat trick at RIT.
Hiller has been playing hockey since the age of five or six and has served on the RIT team since she was a first-year. Before coming here, she was the captain of the Brampton Junior Thunder, an amateur women’s team in Ontario.
In the 2011-2012 season, Hiller won the All-Eastern College Athletic Conference West honorable mention accolades and RIT Female Athlete of the Week for the week on October 31.
For Hiller, the most difficult part is finding balance between games, practice, working out and schoolwork. Those who do not do well in school do not get to play, she said. This provides motivation for her and her team to do well academically. According to Hiller, they always pull through.
Understandably, her favorite memory of hockey at RIT was winning the national championship for Division III in the 2011-2012 season. Hiller is also happy with the increasing turnouts to the women’s hockey games and hopes
the trend continues.
Hiller feels that it will be bittersweet to graduate. “Hockey and the team is basically everything. It’s my life here. You couldn’t really ask for better girls and a better team, and a better sport,” she said with a smile. Because of her love for the game, Hiller hopes to continue to be involved in hockey well after college.
