More than 200 girls gathered in Oxford, Ohio, in late July for the 2024 USA Hockey Girls 15 National Player Development Camp, driven by AAA, but they weren’t the only ones on site looking to learn and grow their skills.
Among the staff for the camp was Cassandra Vaccaro. The college junior is an exercise science major and a goalie for the University of Buffalo women’s club hockey team. Vaccaro served as a team leader at the camp, helping support and mentor a group of teenagers from the moment they woke up until they went to sleep. It was an intense few days that Vaccaro said helped reaffirm that she is on the right path.
The experience would have been unfathomable for her just three years ago.
Vaccaro doesn’t remember a time before she played hockey. Growing up around Washington, D.C., she played on youth and travel teams and loved the sport thanks to a father who grew up in Buffalo and put her on skates.
However, she was burned out and felt like she was going through the motions — playing hockey more by routine and because it was what she had always done – by the time she was thinking about college.
Instead of pursuing NCAA hockey, Vaccaro chose to attend the University of Buffalo for its academics and to be close to family.
“I have been skating since I was 3, playing hockey since I was 6,” Vaccaro said. “Hockey has always been a part of my life. Burnout is a huge thing. When you’re on a travel team, it’s hockey, hockey, hockey. It’s easy to burn out. You get tired of it. By the time I reached high school I was still playing because that’s all I knew. Hockey was half my life.”
She knew Buffalo had a women’s club hockey team and took her goalie gear with her when she moved on campus but was still wary about getting involved in organized hockey again. Three years later, Vaccaro has found a renewed love for the sport and is now the president of Buffalo’s women’s club hockey team.
“I fell back in love with the sport because of the club team at Buffalo,” she said. “You’re still playing for your school. It’s still competitive, but there’s less pressure. It provides an environment for re-endearing yourself to the sport. Going to school with no expectation of playing hockey and then finding this group of girls, it’s hard to describe the feeling I get. It gave me a new perspective on the sport. It’s a combination of growing up and being able to take a step back. I was able to separate my love of the game from how I felt in high school.”
Buffalo is one of 114 schools across two divisions that fields a women’s club hockey team through the American Collegiate Hockey Association. While much of the focus on collegiate hockey is on NCAA Division I and Division III programs, more than 2,000 women played collegiate club hockey last season.
Vaccaro has added a coaching minor to her coursework, is working towards earning her USA Hockey level three coaching certification and spent the summer as a team leader at the Girls 15 camp.
“I like to live by the motto, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none,’” she said. “When there’s a new opportunity to do something, I’ll jump right in, and I’ll give it my best and I’ll learn along the way.”
Camp was a new experience, but one she approached wholeheartedly, hoping to learn as much as she could from both the high-level players and the rest of the staff. Taking part in camp was incredibly validating, she said.
“Camp showed me this is where I want to be,” Vaccaro said. “I want to help players just get to that next step so that they can be the best player that they’re possibly able to be. I want to be able to make sure that my players don’t feel the way that I did in high school. Being able to impart some knowledge and see a player grow from that is one of the best feelings in the world.”
As a team leader at the Girls 15 camp, Vaccaro loved getting to help create a team dynamic with a group who’d never met each other before. Being with the players through all their training on and off the ice, plus meals and downtime, gave her perspective on the team dynamic and mental side of the players that even the coaches didn’t get.
After nearly walking away from the sport, she’s thrilled to help foster a love for it in others now.
Vaccaro said getting involved with the club team at Buffalo changed the course of her life. The experience of playing in the ACHA is something she could never have imagined and has given her more than she ever expected.
“It has given me the chance to get more into coaching and it feels like I found my path,” she said. “When I’m coaching, it feels like I’m in a zone and everything else falls away. I helped my dad coach growing up, but it wasn’t until I was in Buffalo and started loving the game that I took on coaching. The girls I help coach don’t know the difference; they just know I’m a college hockey player. To them it’s so cool. That helped change my own mind about feeling like ACHA is (something) less.”
Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.
