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Busy April was Full of Recruiting, Signings

By Joshua Boyd, 05/10/18, 12:00AM EDT

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WILMINGTON, MA -- The Boston Shamrocks are a year-round operation. Although the official games ended back in early March when the Shamrocks made the Junior Women’s Hockey League semifinals, the management and coaching staff keep plugging away.

“The main order of business for the Shamrocks U19 and U16 since the playoffs is finalizing both of our rosters. They should be finalized in the next couple weeks,” said head coach Jordan Hampton.

Along with coaching the games, the Shamrocks staff spends a lot of in-season time on the road with a mind to the next season. After all, the Boston Shamrocks are a fully scouted and recruited team when the final rosters are put on paper. 

“We do not have tryouts for the U16 and U19 JWHL full-season teams. We recruit the kids we want instead,” Hampton added. 

The Shamrocks staff made the rounds of the USA Hockey National Tournaments, and next up after that were USA Hockey District and Festival tryouts. 

Hampton and the Shamrocks had quite a bit of work to do, after all. There will be an almost entirely new team taking the ice for the U19 full-season squad. 

“We expect about three players to come back to us next year,” added Hampton. “We made over our team and have a lot of out-of-state kids next year, so we are super excited about next season as well.” 

The organization also utilizes its U16 full-season team to prepare for the grind of the JWHL Major Division, which is chock full of NCAA Division 1 and 3 prospects on some of the top women’s teams from both the U.S. and Canada. 

“We have about four or five players from the U16 team moving up next year and we are very excited to work with most of them for two more years because they are younger,” Hampton added. “We have a lot of talent that we are excited to work on skill development and conditioning with them.”

Fastball inside: Online at www.bostonshamrocks.net, you can read about Shamrocks alumna Amanda Conway, who was the NCAA Division 3 Player of the Year. Conway is with the Norwich University team that captured this year’s D-3 National Championship. Conway scored 43 points in her 29 games with the Shamrocks in 2015-16. This year, she racked up 34 goals and 59 points in 31 NCAA games. 

She threw the first pitch for the Boston Red Sox on April 10, and was honored on the field along with her Norwich teammates for taking the title, capping off an amazing 27-1-3 season.