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“ Yeah, I just love it here,” said Tom, a defenseman with the Junior Women’ s Hockey League’ s Boston Shamrocks.“ I love coming to the rink every day to play hockey with a group of girls that I just love being around.
“ I love playing for Sean( Shamrocks head coach Sean Fisher) and it’ s just so much fun playing with our group. We don’ t get into Boston, into the city, very often, but we play in an area that is just so close to so many major colleges, it’ s just a great atmosphere to play in. And it’ s just so welcoming. It’ s a great place to play.”
Tom, who was the captain of the gold-medal winning Team Manitoba at the 2017 National Aboriginal Hockey Championship in Cowichan Valley, B. C., is one of the
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best players, both on the Shamrocks and in the JWHL. Last spring at the NAHC, she led Manitoba with five goals and eight points in six tournament games. This year, the traditional stay-at-home defenseman, who happens to have tremendous speed and skills, has stepped up her game significantly in Boston. And her coach is thrilled with her improvement.
“ Taylor has really come into her own here in Boston,” said Fisher, the former assistant to Jon Rempel at the University of Manitoba.“ She has some great physical tools-- she shoots it well, skates well, checks, angles and defends well.
“ I have found her to be a very coachable player, she is eager to learn and is thinking the game at a very high level
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right now and that has clearly helped our team achieve some positive results through the first 20 games of the season.”
That’ s another thing Tom likes about playing for the Shamrocks. While the team had played seven JWHL games through the middle of November( 5-2-0), they had actually played a total of 20 games against some of the best competition on both sides of the border.
As a result, Tom is now at the point where she is beginning to sort out her scholarship offers. She has a couple of official visits and although she hasn’ t yet made a decision, she’ s getting closer.
“ I’ m not a huge fan of the really big schools,” she said.“ I want to go to a university where I see some familiar faces every day, people I
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CAPTAIN TAYLOR TOM( MIDDLE) AND HER TEAM MANITOBA NAHC FEMALE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS |
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132 | GAME ON | DECEMBER 2017 |