The Spire

Aiden Konold ’26

Chief Sports Editor

The first time that Abby Hornung slipped on a pair of skates was at her older brother, Jackson’s, fifth birthday party. Abby was just two and a half years old, but still, she made her way around the rink in her figure skates. She was determined and motivated by nothing more than her love for skating. 

Soon after Abby’s first time on the ice, her parents, John and Sam, enrolled Abby and her older sister, Maddy, in the Flyers youth learn to skate program. Abby and Maddy adjusted to using hockey skates together, and started playing hockey in Framingham on the boys’ teams. 

When Jackson wanted to play street hockey growing up, he stuck his youngest sister behind the net and ripped shots at her. And when Abby learned how to skate, she accompanied her older brother to the makeshift skating rink behind their house and stood in the net, ready to save the shots coming her way. 

As Abby started to take an interest in goalkeeping, her parents bought her a New York Rangers-themed street hockey goalie mask. A year later, all three Hornung children were gifted a set of goalie pads, but Abby was the only one who actually stuck with it. 

The first time that Abby’s dad equipped his youngest daughter with her new pads and placed her out on the ice in front of the goal, Abby instinctively knew what to do and where to be. During house league, the youth learn-to-hockey program that Abby played growing up, the goalies constantly rotated. 

When Abby’s dad placed the more experienced hockey players and skilled skaters behind the net, they had no idea what to do. But as soon as he stuck Abby there, she started making saves all over the place. She had an innate, unteachable ability from the beginning. 

But Abby never relied on mere instincts. She took up hockey because she loved it, and then did everything that she could to be the best at it. 

In the third grade, Abby wrote down her ultimate dream: to one day play for the U.S. national women’s hockey team in the Olympics. 

“Even though I don’t have to, I want to,” Abby told her older sister, Maddy, as she left the house for training sessions with her goalie coach, Brian Robinson.

When Robinson first met Abby, he was immediately drawn to her red, white, and black KOHO hockey pads. The pads were in the same color scheme as Abby’s Minuteman Flames team uniform. 

“I was like, ‘Wow this goalie’s got some pretty good style,’ ” Robinson recalls from one of the first times he met Abby. “And then, sure enough, her skill set matched the good style she had as well.” 

Abby was one of Robinson’s top goalies, male or female, born in 2003. 

For close to 10 years, Stop It Goaltending has had a female director, but Abby always chose to work with Robinson. 

Everytime a puck rebounded off of Abby’s pads, Robinson was within six to eight feet of her, ready to rip a shot into the back of the net. But by the time Abby turned 13, even as Robinson shot as hard as he could, he was no longer scoring on her with ease. 

When the other guys that Robinson hired, some of them Division-I and Division-III college hockey players, took shots at Abby, she chirped at them, telling them to shoot harder. In these sessions, Abby faced harder shots than anything she faced in games, which helped her develop and exceed the ability of her peers, who weren’t putting in the work that she was. 

Abby’s dad burned through gas driving 40 minutes down and back from Marlborough up to seven nights a week to take Abby to practices and games. 

On the weekends, Abby traveled all over the country to places like Pittsburgh, Jay Peak in Vermont, Lake Placid, and Minnesota with her dad in the driver’s seat. Family vacations took place wherever Abby was playing her club tournaments. 

“I always looked forward to it, and I just kept getting better and kept having so much more fun with it,” Abby says. “So that was ultimately the reason I just kept continuing with it.” 

Whenever Abby wasn’t on the road playing hockey with her dad for an impromptu family vacation or practicing with her goalie coach, she was tuned into the family television set watching NHL and PWHL games, trying to learn lessons from the goalies she watched. 

By the sixth grade, Abby was dead set on playing prep school hockey. For a girl whose dream it was to play at the highest level possible, it was the next logical step. Even so, when Abby was in the eighth grade, her brother made one last ditch effort to convince his youngest sister to stay in Ashland and attend their local high school. Jackson would soon be entering his senior year, and he thought it would be cool for Abby to play goalie for the boys’ Varsity team. 

Before Abby went on to focus exclusively on ice hockey and field hockey, she played baseball on the boys’ teams growing up. At age twelve, she won her Little League’s home run derby. Abby’s play kept the boys she played with from saying any of the sexist comments that existed in their heads. But she wouldn’t be playing for Ashland High School’s boys’ Varsity hockey team. Her mind was already made up. She was going to play prep school hockey. 

When Abby started looking at prep schools, she kept her radius close to home. She looked at St. Mark’s and Rivers, and reached out to coaches, toured campuses, and had interviews, all while taking a PSAT prep course. A student’s performance on the PSAT holds significant weight over whether or not they are accepted to prep school. In the same year that coaches from Penn State and RPI called Abby about playing ice hockey for their programs, Abby didn’t get into any of the local schools she applied to. Abby and her parents considered holding off for a year. 

Abby’s break came during her eighth grade year, when Abby was playing goalie for her Assabet Valley Patriots team at nationals. The Berkshire School’s head coach, Lisa Marshall, stood next to Abby’s dad during the game, and told him that she still needed a starting goalie for next season. 

The Berkshire School, a two hour drive west of Ashland, was not originally on Abby’s list. Though Abby was already accepted, she did not think that she was capable of moving so far away from home. 

But two weeks after Coach Marshall talked to Abby’s dad, Abby was on Berkshire’s campus for a tour. Though Abby and her parents also checked out Tabor Academy in Marion, Abby clicked with Coach Marshall right away. Marshall played goalie in college and had experience as a goaltending coach, which appealed to Abby’s desire to play goalie beyond prep school. 

“Going to Berkshire was something that I never would have envisioned,” Abby’s mom, Sam, says over Zoom. “Her leaving and not going to high school in her town and doing that was a lot of commitment because she’s just more [of a] homebody with us. And it was just nice to see her have the courage to do that, because that’s what she really wanted.” 

Despite the two hours now separating Abby from her parents, they talked at least once a week. And even though she was now at Berkshire, Abby continued to play club ice hockey closer to home. On Saturdays during the fall, Abby’s parents ventured out to Berkshire to watch her field hockey games, traveled home later that afternoon, and then  drove her to her club hockey games on Sundays. 

On some of Abby’s trips home, she traveled to Skidmore College with her family to watch her brother, Jackson, play D-III college baseball. 

“I always told her, it’s going to be tougher than [how] I have it, Abs,” Jackson recalls telling his younger sister when she talked about playing at the D-I level. 

Though Abby briefly considered playing field hockey and ice hockey at the Division-III level, it was always her dream to play Division-I. At Berkshire, Abby showed up to every goalie world practice, and every additional off ice workout. 

On the ice, Abby routinely beat Berkshire’s fastest player, a Division-1 forward, and off it, she outran the fastest players in sprinting drills. 

Abby was so good as a goalie that Coach Marshall sometimes had to sub her out because her teammates stopped playing their hardest knowing that Abby could bail them out. 

Though Abby continued to outperform her peers and opponents, the COVID-19 pandemic halted play just as she and her teammates were about to head to nationals. Going into her senior year, Abby had yet to talk to a college program since Penn State and RPI called her in the eighth grade. Due to the pandemic, goalies started taking fifth years and Abby didn’t get the same looks that she would have had she had the opportunity to play at nationals. 

“Now you start panicking a little,” says Abby’s dad. “So it wasn’t easy. And then she ended up talking to a couple of programs, and really, Holy Cross, ended up being the only one that gave her a firm, you have a spot if you want it, offer.” 

During Abby’s senior year, Yale, UConn, and Stonehill plus some D-III schools expressed interest in her. Abby took a look at a handful of D-III schools, but she immediately didn’t like the experience. 

As other D-I schools started to fall through, Holy Cross stood atop Abby’s list. There was a sense of familiarity since Abby’s dad and sister both went to Holy Cross, and it was one of the few schools that remained firmly committed to her. 

Holy Cross women’s ice hockey head coach, Katie Lachapelle, could not promise Abby much beyond offering her the third goalie spot. Rising junior Madison Beck was the bona fide starter. 

 “We knew we were also recruiting [junior goalie] Brooke [Loranger], who was coming in at the same time and we couldn’t really promise Abby a lot at the time on what her playing time would look like,” Holy Cross women’s ice hockey head coach, Katie Lachapelle, says over the phone. “I think that’s what makes this an even cooler story is that we didn’t know if she’d play a game in her four years.” 

There wasn’t even a scholarship attached to Abby’s commitment. All that was offered was a spot to come in and be the third goalie. But deep down, Abby thought that through working hard enough, as she had always done, she would be able to compete for playing time. 

Whenever Abby talked to her mom over the phone during her first few weeks on campus, she’d tell her, “I signed up for goalie three, that’s my job.” 

Abby did everything that was asked of her, and during the summers between her freshman and sophomore and sophomore and junior seasons, Abby worked with strength and conditioning coach, Jeff Oliver. For at least three days each week and one hour per day, Abby worked on improving her hip mobility, lower body strength, and conditioning. Coach Oliver developed a plan for Abby that incorporated sled drills to improve explosiveness, and tennis ball drills to build up her hand-eye coordination. 

“She puts 100% into everything she does,” senior team captain Emma Min says. “[She] wants to get better for herself and for the team, puts in the extra work when no one’s watching.” 

Last season, Abby took home the team’s strength and conditioning award, which Coach Oliver presents to the athlete with the best work ethic and buy-in to the training program. 

“She’s an exceptional kid, it’s a great story,” Coach Oliver says of Abby, as rap music booms over the speaker from outside his office in the weight room. “But she’s also one of the hardest working. She just came in every day.” 

In between her time working with Coach Oliver during the offseason, Abby also finds time to work with Coach Robinson in the Stop It Goaltending Professional Goalie Development (PGD) group. This group, which is made up of 18 goalies, breaks off into six different stations with three goalies at each station. Abby has predominantly been the only female in these groups of primarily male goalies, with all male shooters, and five goalie coaches plus Robinson surrounding her. 

While Abby previously trained with Robinson on his facility’s mini rink, she could now take full strides and have the opportunity to work on the situational and tactical aspects of playing goalie that Robinson cannot get to on the mini rink. In the two other stations, Abby works on skating, puck handling, and glove and blocker saves. The full rink sessions start with a 20 minute group skate, and then Abby spends 20 minutes in each station, working on her craft. 

“She’s always someone that shows up and doesn’t need to be motivated, which is one of my favorite attributes in a goalie,” Robinson says. “With someone like her, anyone that’s trying to play at the next level, making it from high school or prep school to college, you [have] to be self motivated. And she’s absolutely one of those types.” 

Abby always asked her coaches and teammates questions, and observed how the other goalies went about their business. 

During the academic year, Abby shows up to the Hart Center early and stays late, working with goalie coach Ed Kesell on playing the puck more, working on her hands, and being over the puck.  

“One of the big ones in the beginning of the season, [was] just being confident in my skating and my abilities, because he knew I had that,” Abby says. “He just wanted me to know I had it, too.”  

Through her first two seasons at Holy Cross, Abby appeared in only two games. Despite registering a .925 save percentage in those two games and making 49 saves, Abby rarely saw the ice. 

“I think, honestly, I needed those two years of development, in both hockey and just learning how to be a great teammate,” Hornung says. “I think that was something I was never used to not playing, but something that needed to happen for me to grow as a person and a player.” 

Abby accepted the situation that she was in, and just kept working and supporting her teammates. Even when Abby was not in the net, she offered her teammates words of encouragement and whenever teammate, Emma Min, came off the ice, Abby was always the first person to tell her, “good job.” 

Some days, though, Abby called home and told her parents that she felt like her coaches didn’t even think that she could skate. Since she was the third string goalie, Abby didn’t feel like the coaches viewed her as skilled, even after a rare start in Abby’s sophomore season against Maine, in which she recorded 41 saves in an overtime loss. Abby just wanted the opportunity to consistently prove herself.  

In the first game of Abby’s junior year, she was listed as the number three goalie, behind Brooke and freshman, Lisa Mombourquette. Still, Abby approached every practice as her shot to move up the depth chart. 

“It’s my job [to be the third goalie],” Abby told her parents in a phone call at the beginning of the season. “I still don’t know what this season might bring.” 

10 minutes later, Abby called her parents back and told them that she was going to play in the next game. 

Seven games into the 2024-25 season, junior Brooke Loranger, the starting goalie, suffered an injury and soon after, Abby was named the starter. 

“Brooke kind of had it going pretty well at the beginning of the year before her injury, and so, you know, we were just kind of riding Brooke a bit here,” Coach Lachapelle says. “And then, after Brooke got hurt, we felt Abby was next up, and [she] certainly rose to the occasion big time.” 

When Abby took over, Min and Abby’s other teammates told her that they had faith in her and would have her back just like she always had theirs. Even as Abby battled through losses and the difficult adjustment to becoming a starting goalie in the hyper competitive Hockey East, teammates told her that she deserved this opportunity, which built Abby’s confidence. 

Before her starts, Abby places headphones over her ears, closes her eyes, and visualizes herself on the ice with her gray Holy Cross hockey hoodie covering her head. 

“She just kind of goes into this mode where she’s super locked in and focused,” Min says. “And [she] is not worried about anything else around her, except for performing [at] her best.” 

This season, her first as a primary starter, Abby earned Hockey East Second Team All-Star honors, and she was the runner-up in the Hockey East Stop It Goaltending Goaltender of the Year race. In 25 starts, Abby saved 738 shots, recorded a 1.9 goals-against average, and tied Carly Dominick-Sabol for the greatest single-season save percentage in Holy Cross women’s hockey history, .940. Abby was the first player from Holy Cross to be named to a Hockey East Second Team. 

“There’s so many good goalies in our league, so it’s just an honor to be considered among them,” Abby says. “I had no expectations coming into the year and stepping into that goal, so I’m just proud of the way the team was able to perform and how I was able to perform for them.” 

Whenever Abby made an unreal save this season, her brother immediately posted it everywhere so that everyone could see how good his sister is. But Abby has never been motivated by the social media spotlight or awards. 

“I feel like no matter what award they give her, if she could just keep playing forever, that’s what she would care about,” Abby’s sister, Maddy, says. “But it’s cool to see her get recognized for something that she loves to do.”

As Abby turns the page to next season, her brother is already thinking about what his sister will do two years from now, after she graduates.

“Well, I’ve got another season,” Abby always responds when her brother asks her about what she’s going to do next. 

“All right, well, you can’t go pro yet?” Jackson asks her. 

“I have another season,” Abby always repeats. 

Featured image courtesy of Holy Cross Athletics