Camil Blanchet’s big impact on a small campus

 (Photo courtesy of Bowdoin Athletics)

 

Bowdoin senior forward Camil Blanchet has a lot on his plate while at school. He played every men’s hockey game this season for the Polar Bears, and had been playing lacrosse as well.

Statistically speaking, Blanchet’s contributions have been modest on the ice. He tallied 32 points over 85 games, and only broke double-digit points in one season with 13 as a sophomore. After that same year, he left the lacrosse team, having appeared in a mere nine games and scooped up nine ground balls.

But besides the rigors of playing a sport and being a full-time student, Blanchet has been very active doing charity work in his community. That constant overtime presence has had a can’t-miss impact. To that point, Blanchet is one of five finalists for the 2018 Hockey Humanitarian Award.

Name a Bowdoin-sanctioned service project, and chances are Blanchet has taken part. His leadership qualities have manifested themselves through his liaising role between the campus’ community-service office and his peers. He has allies with the Polar Bears football team to raise funds for cancer research. And he enlisted hockey roster-sized group of volunteers for a multi-charity half-marathon (Race the Runway) and a leadership training program (Breaking the Bubble).

The McKeen Common Good Center sees Blanchet’s shadow at a rate that rivals any classroom or athletic facility on campus. McKeen helps students connect with the community of Brunswick, Maine, and encourages them to volunteer and help the relationship between the school and the town.

Blanchet was drawn to this aspect of the Bowdoin experience when he was a candidate for admission. And now that all of his competitive athletic endeavors are behind him, community involvement will join his studies as the one aspect that will fill every week of his tenure there.

Pucks and Recreation recently got the chance to speak with Blanchet about his charity work.

How and when did you first hear about the McKeen Common Good Center?

In my application to Bowdoin, one of the essays explained the history of the McKeen Center and what they currently do. One of the first big events of the school year isn’t a football game, it’s Common Good Day. This is a day when over 500 students, faculty and staff participate in community-building activities around the greater Brunswick area one Saturday afternoon. That was my first direct interaction with the McKeen Center.

What was the fundraiser you worked on with the football team?

The football team was selling neon-pink long-sleeve shirts in a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. A group of representatives from the Breaking the Bubble initiative wanted to expand the fundraiser and have our respective teammates participate. It was pretty easy to order more shirts. The football team raised the majority of the final donation. Getting other teams involved and supporting the fundraiser was a cool thing to see.

 (Photo courtesy of Bowdoin Athletics)

 

Can you describe the Breaking the Bubble initiative and who all you have been working with there?

Breaking a Bubble is an attempt to connect the various work that athletic teams do throughout the year with the work that the McKeen Center does. The McKeen Center has developed strong relationships with the greater Brunswick community, and has resources to support students working with the community in any capacity. It only makes sense to connect teams with the plethora of resources and experience that the McKeen Center provides.

How did you get involved with Race the Runway?

I heard about Race the Runway through the McKeen Center. It was a featured event that requested race-day volunteers. I thought it was a good opportunity for the team to give back to a community that is so supportive of us at the hockey rink. I reached out to a Race the Runway representative who works at Mid Coast Hospital and told her about our interest. It worked out to be a beautiful Saturday in the spring.

How did you hear about all of these events? Was it difficult to initially get involved with them at a smaller school (roughly 1,800 students enrolled) like Bowdoin?

It was never hard to hear about the various events that are happening. There is a school-wide email listing the week’s events, posters and, most importantly, word of mouth. As a student here, you always hear about events that are going on. It’s really about how much time you have and what you want to do.

Have you taken any courses offered by the Center?

As part of starting Breaking the Bubble, all of the student-representatives went through a formal training process with the McKeen Center. This leadership training covered the basics, like how to access different resources on campus to things like how to effectively lead a trip and ensure participants are realizing the value of their work.

Through the McKeen Center, have you ever considered going abroad on a service trip?

I have certainly considered it, but I also knew that it wasn’t likely. With hockey taking up Thanksgiving, winter and possibly March break every year, the only possible time for a service trip was in the summer. I volunteered in Rwanda at the Rwanda Biomedical Center the summer after my sophomore year, so I have had a similar type experience.

What are the best aspects of the McKeen Center?

I’m always impressed by the McKeen Center staff and how approachable they are. The people who work here, both staff and students, are always receptive to new ideas and willing to help. They are very responsive to what students want to do. Rather than create their own agenda, they support what the student has a passion for. Another amazing aspect about the McKeen Center is the breadth of programs that they offer.

For a school as small as Bowdoin, it is incredible to have the types of community engagement opportunities that we do.

- Zach Green

Selfless service characterizes Sidney Peters

(Photo by Eric Miller/Gopher Athletics)

 

During the winter months, college hockey players rarely have enough time to sleep. With rigorous academic work, a long season and extracurricular endeavors, they must balance multiple responsibilities.

The offseason provides more opportunities for players to explore interests outside hockey. For Minnesota women’s goaltender Sidney Peters, this has amounted to countless miles traveled and countless hours of community service.

With some of the places those miles have taken her, Peters has seen the meaning of resourcefulness in a more profound light.

In the 2016 offseason, Peters worked in the Hospital Bernard Mev’s, Haiti’s only critical-care and trauma hospital as well as its only newborn and pediatric intensive care unit. She spent eight days in this hospital assisting with stabilizing and treating patients. She splinted broken bones, dressed wounds, performed CPR and learned how to suture.

“This was my first trip outside the country related to my interest in medicine,” she told Pucks and Recreation. “This trip put me in a different mindset to learn and serve others. It helped me appreciate the resources and opportunities that the United States can afford.

“Sometimes we can take for granted what we have. In Haiti, they don’t have the same finances to meet their healthcare needs. There were four beds and one wheelchair in this whole hospital. I also had to think twice about using something like gauze because you never knew who would come into the hospital next.

“We had to make do with what we had. It was heartbreaking at times to see the lack of money or resources that Haiti did not have.”

For her part in healing those physical and emotional wounds, Peters is now formally on appreciation’s receiving end. Recently, the 2018 Hockey Humanitarian Awardcommittee narrowed its list of finalists to five. Peters was among the remaining contenders for the prize presented to college hockey’s “finest citizen” for leadership in community service.

“It is a huge honor to be a top-five finalist for this award,” she said. “This award is pretty special because it recognizes people outside hockey and shows that we are not just athletes. A big part of my life is volunteering, and it is a special feeling to be considered one of the top five finalists for this honor.”

Since the Illinois native arrived in Minneapolis in 2013, she has devoted herself to serving others. That impulse shows in her major in kinesiology and her hopes of attending medical school and later working in the Air Force. 

“I love learning about the human body because there is always more to learn,” she said. “I love working with people and building relationships with them."

This passion sparked Peters’ involvement as a campus EMT. In 2015, she joined the rapid-response team that volunteers to support the university on weekends when its facilities host collegiate or professional sports, concerts, conventions and graduations.

Less than a year later, her work as an EMT led her on a trip with Project Medishare. The American nonprofit strives to support and improve healthcare services in Haiti by donating human resources, technology and medical supplies.

Upon returning from her trip, Peters learned many lessons that she incorporate into her future career goals. 

“My trip to Haiti was powerful, terrifying, and wonderful all at once because I had the chance to serve people who were even more uncomfortable and scared than I was,” she said in a Gophers release. “It takes courage not to run the other way when you encounter the pressure of being responsible for someone else's life, but it is the best feeling in the world knowing that you were there to take care of them when they couldn't take care of themselves.”

Since then, Peters has recommitted herself to getting involved in healthcare to serve people. Meanwhile, she has spent the last two hockey seasons getting rewarded for her equal devotion on the ice.

As a fifth-year senior, Peters is already a two-time national champion. She has appeared in 75 games with a career record of 49-14-6. After serving as current Buffalo Beauts netminder Amanda Leveille’s backup, she led the Gophers to a 2017 Frozen Four berth.

Even with that much demand from the Gophers, Peters does not limit her on-ice energy to competition. Back home in Chicago, she volunteers as a goalie coach with Hockey Ministries International. This organization offers camps combining a love of Christ and a love of hockey.

In Minnesota, Peters volunteers with HopeKids, Special Olympics Minnesota and the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital, among many other organizations. Of those experiences, she fondly remembers the first in particular.

“HopeKids is an organization that supports kids with life-threatening illnesses,” she explained to Pucks and Rec.

“There is an event held each year called Hope Day, which is a big event at the football stadium. It is a highlight of the year because we play games with the kids. I am grateful for days like these because it shows that you can choose joy in the midst of adversity. This day and my other service experiences have changed my perspective on a lot of things.”

With two regular-season games left on Minnesota’s slate, then another high-expectation playoff run, Peters’ transition to med school is imminent. But her love for service remains as strong as ever, due in part to her strong spiritual life.

“I think my faith in God has taught me the value of love and serving others,” she reflected. “It is so important to get involved in your community. We have been given a lot, and I hope that I can continue to spread love and way that I can.”

- John Morton

Lee Stecklein maxes the meaning of the word 'champion'

Lee Stecklein has stood in awe on a field flanked by a seating bowl hovering around a 50,000-spectator capacity. Far from the proverbial fish out of water, she savored the occasion in the company of fellow elite pucksters and members of other communities deviating the daily norm and enjoying one another’s company.

And she did it while absorbing an event whose brevity in duration masks the lengthy, painstaking toil that goes into perfecting its presentation.

The venue: What is Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi?

The occasion: What were the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2014 Winter Games?

Were he furnishing the clue, Alex Trebek would have to technically accept those as correct responses. But the fresher, more frequent two-part answer is the HopeDay Festival at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Sure, that gap year between her freshman and sophomore campaign at the University of Minnesota let Stecklein absorb a few tear-jerking beauties overseas. The active effort to animate the concept of global harmony around an assortment of athletic affairs was anything but old to the youngest member of the 2014 U.S. women’s team.

But barely 18 months later, her return to reality yielded its own fields of fulfillment. Her HopeDay experiences have let her witness local pediatric hospital patients in their own escape from everyday life.

“There was kind of a dance party at my team’s station,” Stecklein recalled in a phone interview with Pucks and Recreation. “So we kind of joined the dance party, and to see all of the kids kind of ignore their troubles and dance away, it made a few of my teammates cry just watching it.”

The spontaneous rave reached a new level when Stecklein and company watched as a wheelchair user “just took over the dance floor.”

In that display, Stecklein saw a grateful beneficiary accepting a spotlight she had devoted the better part of her summer to illuminating.

The Gophers senior blueliner admits she entered college with little community service to speak of. She had a foundation for working with children, chiefly by way of hockey instructional clinics.

Those experiences, along with visiting children’s hospitals, made her service segue way. Beyond that, outreach beyond the rink remained largely uncharted territory.

Still, by the time she was crossing into the university’s upperclassmen range, she was raring to set a tone in the athletic department’s signature philanthropy program.

The result: HopeDay’s first installment to take place entirely at the campus football venue, with Stecklein as one of the select student-athletes spearheading the operation. Opposite tennis player Tereza Brichacova and rower Vanessa Johnston, she had interned with the university athletic department’s MAGIC (Maroon and Gold Impacting the Community) program the preceding summer.

Each autumn since 2006, MAGIC has conducted the annual HopeDay carnival for Twin Cities-area children facing cancer and other adverse health problems. Its 10th installment — conducted on Sept. 14, 2015 — cracked a new plateau by hosting more than 1,000 visitors and by setting up all of its stations at the stadium.

For Stecklein, size tells all in both that breakthrough edition and its follow-up earlier this academic year.

“To have it at TCF Bank Stadium for the first time allowed it to be the biggest event ever,” she said, “and I’m glad it’s going to be there from now on.” 

‘…feel like a very normal person’

The way Merriam-Webster prioritizes its definitions of “champion” make a ladder of Stecklein’s growth from sheer sports celebrity to community collaborator. At No. 4 out of four, the dictionary offers, “a winner of first prize or first place in competition” and “one who shows marked superiority.”

The South St. Paul native caught Gopher bench boss Brad Frost’s attention by fitting those descriptions well enough. She keyed Roseville Area High School to a state playoff crown in 2010, then a close bid for another title in 2012. In between, her emergence as a two-way connoisseur earned her a host of USA Hockey action within her age group at the time.

Crossing the Mississippi River and entering the state’s signature campus elicited — albeit in the most metaphorical terms — what Merriam-Webster may dub Stecklein’s inner “one that does battle for another’s rights” (ranked third on the definition scroll) and “militant advocate or defender” (second).

“I think just being a D-I athlete, you get exposed to a lot of great causes,” she mused.

Stecklein’s college trophy case and list of favorite charitable causes mismatch with her unsatisfied, unassuming demeanor. She has won an NCAA title in each of her first three seasons with the Gophers, then cherried each of those runs by helping Team USA to gold at the IIHF World Championship.

If Minnesota three-peats as the national champions this March, Stecklein will be the first U.S. college hockey player of either gender to garner four rings. Per her public LinkedIn profile, she already has a quartet of philanthropic interests in animal welfare, children, the environment and human rights.

The latter is a testament to her all-around evolution since coming to Frost’s capstone class with intent to build on a winning tradition. Through the MAGIC initiative, she found another guru to emulate in student-athlete development director Anissa Lightner.

Lightner is a 17-year veteran of the university, specializing in preparing all Gophers for life beyond sports and overseeing every community service endeavor. Stecklein proclaims her “one of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet.”

In an August 2010 YouTube spot, Lightner underscored her personal principle of exemplary leadership, stating, “I try to give back in my own personal life through volunteering and different opportunities, and sometimes I’ll see our athletes and they’re, like, ‘What are you doing out here?’ And I’m, like, ‘It’s really hard for me to encourage you to give back if I’m not giving back myself.’”

Stecklein saw that paradigm up close on a daily basis through her internship in the summer of 2015. The definition of that year’s internship corresponded with the ambition and grind that went into mutating HopeDay as everyone knew it.

For the interns, it instilled the same sort of realization a latter-day George Plimpton might reach upon joining a full-fledged workout with Stecklein’s skating sorority. But Stecklein proved to be no mere for-a-day Plimptonian in MAGIC. A craving for self-rewarding virtue took sway and refreshed itself each time she looked at Lightner after a full work day.

“It’s amazing that she has the energy to still have a smile on her face,” Stecklein observed. “It really opened my eyes to that. You feel like a very normal person.”

New goals, new places

Delving into her final semester at Minnesota, Stecklein is staring at an unprecedented long-term venture outside of the Twin Cities. The NWHL’s Buffalo Beauts made her their top draft choice last spring, and she is a viable candidate for the 2017-18 national team leading up to next February’s Olympics.

Save for the 2013-14 tour in preparation for Sochi, she has only experienced fleeting glimpses of other localities for hockey. But as part of her studies in the university’s Carlson School, where she is majoring in entrepreneurial management, she selected Australia for her required journey abroad.

After hanging up her second variety pack of an NCAA trophy and IIHF gold medal, she joined two teammates on a two-week, strictly academic excursion in May 2015.

“Just to see another country that way and thinking about getting involved abroad with a cause is something I would definitely consider in the future,” she said.

Her travel bag has also accrued stickers from Canada, the Czech Republic, Sweden and, most recently, Finland. All of those were the sites of short-term tournaments, including America’s victory at this past November’s Four Nations Cup.

But not unlike the glowering gold-medal Olympic omission, Stecklein’s itch to size up her outside interests in other nations remains unattended.

“It’s hard,” she conceded. “When we are traveling, we see a very small part of each country; not a lot of time for sightseeing. I would like to go to those countries to get a broader perspective.”

Barring an unexpected twist, Stecklein has a passport to Pyeongchang in the works for February 2018. That would add South Korea to her list of first-hand glimpses at other countries while delaying her arrival in Buffalo by a year.

“I’m not quite sure where I’ll end up or what I’ll end up doing,” she said. “But wherever I am, my time at ‘the U’ has made me realize how important it is to get involved in my community.”