Fans of the women's hockey team hardly bat an eye anymore when the announcer at Thompson Arena drones "Dartmouth goal scored by number four, Rachel Rochat."
Rochat, the captain and lone senior on the women's hockey team, showed the Dartmouth community and beyond what she was made of this past season.
Rochat finished the season as the team's second leading scorer, only six points behind teammate Sarah Howald '96. In her career at Dartmouth, Rochat has racked up more than 100 points.
Rochat has reason to be so comfortable on the ice. She has been skating since she was three years old. While her parents did not plan for her to play hockey, Rochat hit the rink early and has been playing since then.
"My parents were going to put me on figure skates, but my older brother played hockey and I idolized him," Rochat said. Rochat ended up on hockey skates as well.
Back home in Bernardsville, N.J., girl's hockey teams were hard to find and Rochat spent her days before Dartmouth playing on boy's teams. Sometimes a few other girls played, but for the most part Rochat played only with boys.
"Eventually some girl's teams were formed, but by then I was so much involved with the boy's teams that I didn't play on them," Rochat said.
Now when Rochat returns home, she finds 50 girls who want to play, too many for the spaces available.
In high school, Rochat played on three different teams: the Pingry School team, the Essex Hunt Club team and the Mennen Arena Club team. While her participation on the two club teams lasted throughout high school, it was not so for her high school's team.
Rochat began playing on the Pingry team her sophomore year and played only halfway through her senior year. Like her other teams, the Pingry team was a boy's team.
"The coach was chauvinistic. My teammates didn't support me. It was such an ordeal," she said Everyone was nice, but that was just it. They were too nice. I didn't want to be treated that way. I just wanted to be a hockey player."
Halfway through her senior season, Rochat quit playing for Pingry.
"I was starting to hate hockey. It was making me miserable," she said.
Rochat continued to play for the other two teams, which practiced once a week and each played one game on the weekends.
One of the reasons Rochat chose Dartmouth was hockey.
"I only looked at schools in the Northeast. I liked Dartmouth's attitude of play hard, work hard," she said. "when you walk into Thompson Arena, you're like, 'whoa.' It's impressive."
Having played under men's hockey rules all her life, once at Dartmouth, Rochat had to adjust to the rules of women's hockey.
One of the most obvious of those rules is that there is no checking allowed in women's hockey.
"It's nice. I used to get slaughtered in high school. I wouldn't even have the puck and I'd be skating along and get blind-sided," she said.
Rochat said playing hockey has been a different experience each year. "I didn't come in with the best attitude because of my experience in high school. I didn't even know to go to bed early the night before a game,"Rochat said.
Sophomore year, Rochat "started getting a little more serious." That year, 1993, the team won the Ivy League championship and made it as far as the semifinals in the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament, one step further than it went this year.
"I think we were ranked second in the nation. It was a year second only to this one," she said.
While the team had a slightly better year in 1993, Rochat felt more satisfaction this year because of the team's dynamics and expectations.
"Our team this year is a really close team," she said.Rochat also mentioned that they "were underdogs" going into the season.
"This year is the first year I feel that I really played to my potential. I wish I had earlier. Hockey would have been a lot better if I had," Rochat said.
One reason for Rochat's increased enthusiasm in the team was her new responsibilities. As the captain and only senior on the team, Rochat was forced to provide much of the team's leadership.
Rochat's coach, George Crowe said "She's progressed a great deal since her freshman year. Every year she's gotten better and better and she played very good hockey this year. Being captain really helped her. It added more responsibility."
"Rocket was a wonderful captain and is a really special person. We'll miss her not only for her skills on the ice, but also for her leadership and calm off the ice," teammate Sarah Lenczner '97 said. "She was always laid back, always in control, and never got worked up about team crises the way that it is so easy to do."
While she enjoyed providing the senior leadership, Rochat realizes now that it does have its drawbacks.
"Right now it's really hard [being the only senior] because I don't have anyone to go through leaving with," she said.
"We have had captains in the past who were not necessarily leaders, but that wasn't the case with Roach," Lenczner said. "I think that every member of the team trusted her and considered her not only our captain, but our leader as well.
As for the future, Rochat, who is majoring in government and minoring in economics, has no specific plans for after graduation yet.
Rochat briefly went through corporate recruiting, but she is now thinking of both law school and journalism school.
"For a year, I don't know, I want to have fun," she said.
This fun may include playing on a hockey team in Switzerland. Rochat said the Swiss national team is not as strong as the United States national team, and because her father is Swiss, she hopes to be able to play on it.
Because the hockey team was so close this year and because of the success of the season, Rochat said she is really sad right now to leave.
"But I wouldn't trade this year for the world. It was so much fun," she said.
Rochat will be missed. "She was one of our top two point-getters and one of our main go to players. She played on the top line, on the power play, and man down," Crowe said of Rochat. "You couldn't ask too much more of anybody."
