So for those of you who are new to the Green Mountain Gals series, Welcome. I started this series in May of 2021 with my previous site, The Puck Authority, and I’m now bringing this great series to Inside The Rink. This series aims to highlight professional female hockey players from Vermont who went to college in Vermont. The previous series have highlighted US Olympian Amanda Pelkey and current GM of the Rivs Tori Charron. However, today we will focus on Rivs Foward Kaycie Anderson.
From the Pond to the Mall
Anderson started playing hockey at a young age seeing she came from the state of hockey. “I’m from Minnesota, so it’s kinda just something you do. I grew up on Lake Minnetonka, and I played pond hockey and saw a flyer for girls hockey at high school, and that’s how I started.” The Minnesota native would head to Vermont after high school to play collegiate hockey at the Norwich Univerisity over her four years at Norwich.
Over four years with the Cadets, Kaycie was a point-per-game player putting up 118 points in 118 games. The Minnesota native would head to Vermont after high school to play collegiate hockey at Norwich Univerisity. Norwich and The University of Vermont have been known as two power-house schools in the Green Mountain State. It’s one way to help get more girls into hockey, “I think it helps a lot having Norwich in the middle of Vermont, UVM in Burlington, then Middlebury and Plymouth St; having our program being very successful, it was easy to work with the youth teams that would use our rinks cause we could help run clinics and practices” said Anderson.
Kaycie would end up going pro and signing a deal with the Connecticut Whale for the 2017-18 season, a team she would spend five seasons with, putting up seven goals and 11 assists for 18 points. Her best season came in the 2019-20 season, ironically right before COVID hit, where she had three goals and eight assists for 11 points in 24 games. During her time in Connecticut, Kaycie had gotten the chance to play with a few Norwich alumni, one of them being Amanda Conway, who became the first player to be drafted into the league as the Whale took her in the fourth round of the draft, “It was great, I was at Norwich a little bit before her, I talked to her before she decided to sign with Connecticut and I was pretty pumped to have Norwich alumni cause I had other Norwich play on the team here and there and that was a lot of fun to have that connection.”
Speaking of connection, Kaycie Anderson and Taylor Marchin each spent four years with the Whale before they both made the jump to the Riveters this season, “We both live in Stanford, CT, I think Taylor joined my second season with the Whale, and we’ve been carpool buddies for the last three years now, and we just have played together for quite a while now” said Anderson when asked about Marchin. Anderson and the Riveters are now preparing for their first regular season game at the mall on November 19th, “So excited I think we play Toronto, It’s gonna be a good matchup, it’s gonna be a fun experience, it’s gonna be different that any of us have ever been used to being in the middle of the mall, it’s gonna be a lot of fun, it’s a new start for the Rivs here” said Anderson when asked about her thoughts on the home opener.
