Uncategorized | 12:47 pm | April 6, 2011 | By Alison Griswold

Former women’s hockey captain remembers Schwartz ’11

While the friends, family and supporters of Mandi Schwartz ’11 continue to mourn the loss of the inspirational women’s hockey player who died after a long battle with cancer on Sunday, they are also working to ensure that her legacy endures.

Caroline Murphy ’10, a former captain of the women’s hockey team and classmate of Schwartz’s, wrote a piece commemorating her teammate that was posted on espnW Monday. Schwartz, Murphy wrote, was part of her “new family” at Yale. They trained and played together for more than two years before Schwartz’s December 2008 diagnosis took her away from campus.

In her piece, Murphy expressed thanks for the time she had with Schwartz:

Maybe Mandi was only meant to be a part of my life for a while. Maybe we were only meant to score a few goals together. But the best moment of playing hockey are the milliseconds after you score a goal, before the buzzer sounds or the lights flash, even before arms are thrust upwards in triumph, when your eyes connect with a teammates and you know that your success is their success, that your struggle was their struggle, and that your heart is in the same place as theirs, if just for a moment.

In this moment, Mandi’s heart is with everyone’s, and our eventual success against leukemia will be her success as much as ours. I take comfort in knowing that she will never leave us.

Read the full post here.

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