Courtney Pensavalle hits high notes with her vocal leadership

Photo courtesy of Courtney Pensavalle

 

Clean Bandit never knew it would be the secondhand setup player behind Yale women’s hockey player Courtney Pensavalle’s best off-ice scoring play to date. Ditto Pentatonix with their role as the party feeding her the proverbial puck.

But there she was last spring, awaiting her cues to step up and take her shot. It was her moment in the event of the year for the Unorthojocks, a conglomeration of Bulldog student-athletes with a penchant for a cappella singing.

Football player Kamsi Nwangwu, stationed at the far left of the semicircle, was the de facto player-coach on this number. With his fists stirring in conductor mode, he elicited the Pentatonix-inspired “La, la, la, da, dum” refrain from his 13 other teammates. Once that started, Pensavalle strode casually to the microphone up front.

A split-second of silence, and then…

We’re a thousand miles from comfort, we have traveled land and sea

But as long as you are with me, there’s no place I’d rather be

The second line all but summed up the scenario at hand. Given that the season of ice was behind her, this was the next-best pastime for Pensavalle.

“We have kept it on our setlist for a while,” she told Pucks and Recreation in reference to the Pentatonix arrangement of Clean Bandit’s lyrics. “So it’s kind of been my song for a few years,”

Although now, as a senior, she has a little more time and a brimming desire to top that. With one more big spring concert — the Unorthojam, they call it — she is exploring new selections for her solo.

Even if there is something else she would rather do for her swan song (pun intended), she would never relinquish this as her extracurricular curtain call. Her six fellow seniors in the skating sorority may have acquiescently dropped to strict student status for their final two-plus months. But Pensavalle is an Unorthojock indeed.

“However corny this may sound, there’s a magical quality to what singing with a group of people can bring to your life,” she said. “I am a big believer in the therapeutic and stress-relieving peace that music provides in difficult times. Music makes you take a step back and view the world with a different perspective.”

Incidentally, that kind of creative thinking fueled the founding of Pensavalle’s “other” Yale team. She had come by way of Noble of Greenough in Massachusetts. And like most Ivy League candidates, she had marinated a rounded resume with academic, athletic and artistic accomplishments.

Besides representing a Nobles team in each athletic season, she played external hockey for Assabet Valley and Team Pittsburgh. As an underclassman, she channeled her singing fervor in the school’s chamber choir.

She overlapped that with the Greensleeves a cappella group her sophomore year, rising to the club’s co-presidency as a senior. That same year, she played the part of Ethel in a production of The Pirates of Penzance.

But given her repeat breakaways to USA Hockey’s national tournaments and select camps, Pennsavalle’s primary pursuit seemed clear-cut when college ran her portfolio through its transitional cheese grater. There was no way for her to duplicate her double extracurricular existence at this level.

Fortunately, she had enough like-minded contemporaries with the same conundrum and same not-all-or-nothing flexibility. While no Bulldog athletes could enroll part-time in the established, rigidly regimented musical groups, a looser alternative awaited its conception. 

 

That came in Pensavalle’s freshman year via then-junior fencer Meghan Murphy. Preliminary buzz of a new a cappella group run by and for Yale student-athletes circulated throughout the 2014-15 academic year. By the time the Bulldogs reconvened after the summer, the Unorthojocks were born, albeit humbly.

“We barely got enough people to join my sophomore year because it definitely wasn’t ‘cool’ or popular the first year,” Pensavalle confessed. “We had a steep learning curve that year too because we all came from different musical backgrounds and levels of skill.”

But every dogged expansion team has its day in the inaugural campaign. For the Unorthojocks, one of those early breakthroughs fell on a late Saturday afternoon, Feb. 13, 2016.

Continuing a tradition in the women’s hockey program, Pensavalle was pulling double duty as the team vocalist. In her words, then-assistant coach Jessica Koizumi had “heard that I sang and coerced me into singing both the Canadian and American national anthems my first game.”

She passed her public audition at that scrimmage with McGill University, and the role stuck for the multi-talented, middle-tier forward. While her teammates faced the flag behind their cage, she would stride to center-ice isolation and belt behind their backs.

It can be an unusually lonely job in what many consider the granddaddy of team games. But for her 25th Star-Spangled shift, in the 2015-16 home finale, Pensavalle had the company of her off-ice teammates. At their performance’s conclusion, she gave the non-skating jocks a taste of her sport’s timeless post-goal fist-bump line.

She has her limits with the crossovers, though. Most notably, she made it through her Ingalls Rink tenure without substituting for the stereo as locker-room entertainment.

“My teammates joke in situations when our speakers run out of battery, but I always refuse,” she laughed. Although, “I have performed songs with my guitar from time to time for team bonding activities or banquets.”

Any extra polishing of the pipes, assuming she is willing and ready, is a plus for any Unorthojock. The club typically musters two rehearsals per week, which is where one of Pensavalle’s prep-school takeaways kicks in.

She credits Mike Turner, the director of music at Nobles, with instilling “a lot of basic music theory that I utilize in the group today. He understood that, while he couldn’t expect all of his students to pursue music seriously, he could implement learning into our rehearsals in a creative and effective way to heighten the efficiency of the time we spent together.”

She added, “I was always amazed at how he was able to foster that passion in others.”

As it relates to the Unorthojocks, that efficiency has elevated to the point where its established equivalents have taken notice. Earlier this year, Pensavalle’s posse collaborated with Out of the Blue (OOTB) — a more formal, well-traveled a cappella group of Yalies — for one night.

Established in 1986, OOTB takes multiple national and international tours each year, and has seen action at Madison Square Garden. It has performed for overseas diplomats, Nobel Laureates and Supreme Court Justices.

And as of 2017-18, it welcomes the upstart Unorthojocks as an occasional guest group.

“It was a great experience, and a great first opportunity to penetrate Yale’s a cappella scene,” said Pensavalle.

With the third annual Unorthojam coming next month, the jocks will have sole possession of the spotlight back. One of their goals is to eclipse last year’s attendance of at least 700.

Afterwards, Pensavalle will round out her undergraduate credits, then pursue a master’s degree in education. Though she majored in sociology, she is open to working on an after-school music program when she is placed in Teach For America.

“I love kids, and will be eternally grateful for the role that various teachers have played in my life thus far,” she said.

There is still no telling where that determination to give back will take Pensavalle geographically. Regardless, especially if it entails any music-oriented pedagogy, you might say there are few arrangements she would rather be in.

She even looks forward to her first look from the sidelines at the Unorthojocks’ development.

“I’m excited to see what the future brings for the group in the years ahead,” she said.