It was a Tuesday evening at Lynah Rink, quiet with the exception of the Zamboni’s steady lull. The last practice of the day had concluded. Women’s hockey’s 2025-2026 senior class filed into the Harkness Room — their main study area at the rink — one after the other.
Less than 72 hours stood between the six seniors and their senior night, where they’d be honored postgame for their accomplishments and contributions to the program. After a long day of classes and skating, some were still exhausted, having stayed on the ice as long as they could. After all, practices are now numbered. A compilation of goals and moments from their four years awaited them as they sat down around the long, grey table.
Senior forward Georgia Schiff was first. She watched from the head of the table while her teammates — and best friends — oohed and ahhed around her.
“This is from the [2023] ECAC quarterfinals,” said Eli Fastiff, women’s hockey beat reporter for The Sun.
The players all laughed, Schiff especially so. The video began to play.
“Oh my god!” said senior forward Avi Adam, as pixelated versions of their freshman-year selves began skating. Adam saw herself on screen.
“Avi, are you on the ice?” Schiff asked Adam, sitting to her right.
“Yeah, we’re on together!” Adam replied. “This is our, like, second shift of the game.”
On the screen, Claudia Yu ’25 fired the puck from a sharp angle on net. Another shot yielded a juicy rebound off the Clarkson goaltender’s pads, which popped right to Schiff’s stick. She stuffed it in. When the puck finally slipped through and Schiff celebrated on the ice, her teammates joined her.
Then, on the screen, someone started to hop.
“Who’s hopping?” I asked the group.
“Me,” admitted “Reggie,” senior defender Alyssa Regalado.
“Reggie hops at every goal,” quipped senior defender Sarah MacEachern, sitting just beside Regalado. Everyone laughed.
The players then broke into a conversation about goal celebrations — or, in hockey-speak, “cellies.”
Who cellies the hardest? Who’s the most nonchalant? Each girl had an answer for another, every argument as well-backed as the thesis statements they write for class.
When you sit down with Cornell women’s hockey’s senior class, it may seem like they’ve known each other for more than four years.
Well, that’s because they have.
…
Senior forward Mckenna Van Gelder was the first of the group to commit to Cornell. Then Regalado joined, before Adam made it a trifecta, and MacEachern followed suit soon thereafter.
Little did they know that they would be teammates even before they arrived in Ithaca.
Adam, Van Gelder, Regalado and MacEachern each hail from different places in Canada.
Adam’s hometown of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, is not far from MacEachern’s Canoe Cove, Prince Edward Island. Living on Canada’s east coast, the two had almost no choice but to relocate to further their hockey careers — for Canadians looking to play at the highest level, provinces like Ontario are hotbeds for recruiting and provide higher levels of hockey.
Regalado and Van Gelder hail not far from Toronto, and both played youth hockey on the same ice. Their province of Ontario ultimately served as the stomping grounds in which they, along with Adam and MacEachern, met before their Cornell days.
The group donned the royal blue jersey belonging to the Etobicoke Dolphins, a Canadian junior team in the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association (then called the Provincial Women’s Hockey League). The four were teammates for two seasons — in grades 11 and 12 — before heading to Cornell.
But Adam, Van Gelder, Regalado and MacEachern weren’t the only players whose friendships predated their time on Cornell’s team.
Before Adam suited up for the Dolphins, she spent two years in Rochester, New York, playing for the BK Selects at Bishop Kearney High School. Her first taste of hockey living on American soil, the Selects squared off against a team a few hundred miles south — the Philadelphia Jr. Flyers.
On that team? Future Cornell teammate, senior defender Grace Dwyer.
Dwyer and Adam dueled before Adam made the move to Ontario. Hailing from Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, Dwyer spent her childhood traversing up and down the coast to play hockey, as any kid from the Northeast typically does.
Part of those travels meant shipping up to New England. Around the same time Dwyer and Adam faced off against one another, trips to Vermont meant Dwyer was — unknowingly — clashing with another future teammate: Schiff, whose youth hockey career saw her bounce around from her home state of Vermont to Massachusetts to Pennsylvania and several others.
And when Schiff, a Montpelier, Vermont native, was merely a middle schooler, she played on a development team with the North American Hockey Academy — the club she’d ultimately finish her youth hockey career with later on in high school — for the purpose of showcasing her talents to the top Division I schools.
She didn’t know it at the time, but Schiff was introduced to her future freshman year roommate, Adam.
The Class of 2026 has ties that long predate freshman year move-in. Of course, the women’s hockey world is small — there exist a little over 100 NCAA women’s hockey programs, and only 45 teams are Division I. Chances are, a teammate or two may cross paths if they’re able to defy the odds and play college hockey.
Yet still, one can’t help but wonder. Is it normal to be that well-acquainted with your incoming class before getting to campus?
“No,” Adam said, resolutely.
“I don’t think it’s very common,” Regalado said.
“Four players on one team is kind of crazy,” Schiff added.
But perhaps that’s just a fraction of what makes the class so unique — a bond that was formed long before they spent long days together at Lynah Rink. A bond that transcends the ice, the goals, the assists and everything in between.
A bond that has fueled their winning ways.
…
There’s one particular trophy that stands out to Dwyer.
It’s not necessarily the ECAC championship in 2025, though was unforgettable for the team, as it beat archrival Colgate, 5-1, on home ice. Of course, there was also the NCAA regional championship that same year, beating Minnesota-Duluth in a nailbiter to punch a ticket to the Frozen Four.
But it’s the Ivy League title in 2024 that has stayed with her.
Why?
“That was kind of the first thing we won,” Dwyer said of the title.
The game was close — a 2-1 win eked out on the road at Yale. Cornell jumped out to a 2-0 lead and survived a late onslaught from the Bulldogs to clinch the title. It took the final game of the regular season to decide who would don the Ivy League crown in 2023-2024.
And that trophy — which was celebrated aptly, with sparkling apple cider in the visitors’ locker room at Ingalls Rink in New Haven, Connecticut — was just the first of a barrage of accolades the Class of 2026 would secure.
To their names, Schiff, Dwyer, Regalado, MacEachern, Adam and Van Gelder have two Ivy League titles, an ECAC Hockey regular season title, an ECAC Hockey tournament championship, two NCAA tournament appearances, an NCAA regional championship and a Frozen Four finish — and counting.
The group’s combined 80-37-10 record alone is impressive. But one of those wins is a 7-1 drubbing of Stonehill in the NCAA tournament. Another was a triple-overtime win in the ECAC semifinals. Another was the ECAC championship win over Colgate after going 0-for-4 against them the previous year.
And then there’s the game — the 2025 NCAA regional championship. Regalado’s lone goal in the third period was the difference in a 1-0 victory that sent Cornell to the Frozen Four.
When the six of them — on Tuesday — glued their eyes to the laptop to watch Regalado’s goal, they insisted that the sound be turned on, mostly because they remembered what it felt like before the deafening sound of the fans got there.
“Obviously we don't get the newspapers at very many of our games, and it kind of started a little bit during the playoffs,” Regalado said. “And then that game, the whole student section had newspapers, and were throwing them on the ice.”
The Lynah Faithful infamously shake newspapers and yell, "Boring!" while the opposing team's lineup is being announced, before crumpling them up and heaving them onto the ice when Cornell's lineup starts being read. This tradition is religious at men's hockey games, but had not quite held the same weight at the women's games.
Last year's playoff run changed that.
“I feel like that was pretty surreal for us, because it's not something that we got to really experience," Regalado said.
With each game they played — and won — last season, Lynah got a little bit louder. And it did not go unnoticed.
“As each game went on, I feel like more and more people were coming,” Regalado said.
Regalado’s goal punctuated what was a turbulent run for the Red right up until the national semifinal. And, in those six playoff games in Cornell’s historic postseason push, the Class of 2026 combined for 15 points, which accounted for over a third of the Red’s total points.
But that connection was not just fostered at Cornell — it came before, perhaps in the year leading up to their freshman year, where the four skaters at Etobicoke captured an OWHA Provincial Championship in 2022.
Winning, above all else, is woven into the fabric that makes the Class of 2026 who they are.
But before relishing their accomplishments and looking back fondly on their four years at Cornell, the six seniors were asked another question — any interesting nicknames?
“Micky,” Adam said, in the direction of Van Gelder. “Or magenta.”
Van Gelder shook her head, and the rest of them laughed. Van Gelder is “Mck” or “Mick,” she said, but not “Mac” — she had that name in the juniors and hated it.
“No one calls [Schiff] Georgia, it’s just George,” MacEachern said.
“... Or Georgina,” Dwyer added, yielding a piercing “No!” from Schiff.
Rarely does anyone call Regalado by her first name, Alyssa, as “Reggie” was deemed much more suitable.
Dwyer is “Dar,” and Adam is just “Av.”
“Sar Bear,” Adam said toward MacEachern, who rolled her eyes playfully.
And they went on.
By the end, Regalado still insisted to Dwyer and Schiff that she “can’t introduce [herself] as ‘Reggie.’”
They have had a lot of time to talk about these things — more than just four years.
But clearly, all the time in the world is not enough.
For another look at the conversation between the Class of 2026 and the Sun’s hockey editors, click here.
Jane McNally is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and was the sports editor on the 142nd editorial board. She is a member of the Class of 2026 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. You can follow her on X @JaneMcNally_ and reach her at jmcnally@cornellsun.com.
