Courtesy of Sean Elliot
Camel of the Edition is a series which seeks to highlight extraordinary Connecticut College athletes who have stood out from the herd due to their recent performances or as a leader on campus or on their team.
Claire Sammons ‘25 is a star forward on the women’s hockey team whose incremental development has culminated in a historic 2024-2025 season. The senior from Naperville, Illinois, became the first Camel to win NESCAC Player of the Year for women’s ice hockey, as well as being a finalist for the Laura Hurd award. As a team captain, she is an inspiration to the rest of the roster and has played a major role in the team’s development going forward.
Recently, The College Voice caught up with Sammons to hear about how these accolades impact her, what her plans are after graduation, and how the team will be shaping up without her on next year’s roster.
Could you please introduce yourself?
Hi, my name is Claire Sammons, I am currently a senior, class of 2025 here at Conn. I am an economics major with double minors in psychology and sociology and also a part of the Media, Communications, and Rhetoric pathway. I am a member of the women’s ice hockey team and my other involvements here at Conn include being a Marketing Communications Fellow for the Hale Center for Career Development and also Head of Communications for the school’s One Love chapter.
Talk about your sporting journey and when hockey became your focus.
Growing up, I always played many other sports aside from hockey, including soccer, basketball, softball, and I ran cross country, but hockey always had a special place in my heart. [A] huge reason being that every member of my family has played ice hockey throughout their lives, so that was always special. Whenever I crossed paths with different people, I was often told, ‘Oh, you play ice hockey? I would have never thought that.’ It was cool to stand out a little bit and play a sport that was not always expected.
What was your recruitment process like and why did you end up choosing Conn?
I have grown up in the Chicagoland area my whole life, specifically Wheaton, Illinois. Now my family lives in Naperville, Illinois. I have played club hockey my whole life. I didn’t go to prep school [to play hockey]. Prep school wasn’t really something I knew much about and a lot of people in my area just played club. I played with the same club for roughly seven years before coming to Conn. It was the Chicago Mission and I played with a lot of other talented individuals. A lot of those girls that I played with for all those years went DI and got a lot of playing time in summer even on the national team. It was a very awesome team that I was a part of, and we had a lot of success with some great coaches and a lot of help throughout the recruitment process. Playing with really great other individuals, a lot of my recruitment process was me reaching out to different coaches. I knew that after going to a very rigorous academic, private high school, I wanted to go to [a rigorous academic] school for [college], and also, being able to play hockey would be a really big plus. That is how I found the NESCAC and I thought that it was just the perfect opportunity to have the balance between school, hockey, and fun social life. I found the NESCAC pretty quickly and so I got recruited from different NESCAC schools. I ended up falling in love with Conn for a lot of different reasons. First being the community. I knew a couple people who were older than me that were currently at the school when I was in high school, so I got to talk to them about everything they love about Conn and one of the big things was the community and the sense of family. I also loved the location and how we are near Mystic, a very fun, lively area, and also with the ease to get to two major cities like Boston and New York. For me, coming from Chicago, taking a leap to go to the East Coast was huge and I was leaving a lot of my family behind, but I knew my older brother was living in New York City for work. Being able to hop on the Amtrak and visit him in the city and vice versa was very nice to have and another thing I really liked about Conn.
As a forward, what are your responsibilities and what makes the position appealing to you?
For my position, I was a center forward all four years at Conn which is funny because prior to coming to Conn, I never really played that position. I was typically right or left-wing. One of my first practices, freshman year, [Head] Coach [Kristin] Steele said to me, “You are going to play center and you’re going to be really good at it.” I trusted her, and I trusted my teammates, who helped teach me how to play the position and how to take face-offs. From there, my job as a center was to help gain our team possession from the face-offs, and as a forward, the job was to help generate offense and put the puck in the back of the net. I have always enjoyed playing forward because I always [get] a rush from entering the zone with all of my teammates and finding a groove to set up and attack the net with speed. The best was always scoring and celebrating by going through the handshake line with the team. That was the best part, and playing forward helped make that happen which was always very exciting.
You are currently named a finalist for the 2025 Laura Hurd Award. You were also named NESCAC Player of the Year, the first in Conn College history, and First-team All-NESCAC, the first camel to do so in nine years. Can you talk about what these accolades mean to you?
I am so honored to be recognized and it is not lost on me how lucky I am to play in such a competitive league and be supported so well by Conn. Honestly, going into every season I’ve had, I have never focused on my individual stats or performance because I always wanted my attention to be on what I can do for the betterment of the team and what I can do to just support my teammates so they can play their best. To me, this recognition isn’t just about me; it’s about my entire team and all of the hard work we put in. We really had an amazing season, and that we were able to split on weekends with most of our conference was pretty incredible. That didn’t just happen; I believed in my teammates, and they believed in me and that is how we had such a successful season.
You also recorded the 10th most assists in a single season in the 28 years of the programs’ existence. How were you able to rack up so many assists, and how does it feel to be in the record books?
I always thought, growing up, getting an assist was the best kind of point to get because it was so rewarding to be a part of the play that essentially led to a goal and success. I always thought being a forward and playing with a line was the best way. To build that kind of chemistry is to get to know your teammates off the ice before learning each other on the ice. I always found that super impactful during my career because the more I got to know my teammates and their priorities, their goals, and what they were like off the ice, I was able to better gauge where they were going to be in plays and vice versa and how I could best support them. If I am having a bad shift, I know that my teammate I am playing with will pick my right back up, and vice versa, and it will help us be better when we are going back on the ice.
Your performance has improved year after year. How were you able to accomplish this?
Improving every year got easier because I learned more and more from those older than me what I needed to do to train, that it became second nature. My individual goals each year were a byproduct of team chemistry and having amazing players ahead of me to model after. By trusting our team’s systems, trusting each other, and helping each other has been a great guide to my personal growth and performance and the team’s growth and overall success and performance.
As a captain, how do you contribute to the team on and off the ice, and does that title give you any added pressure?
Being a captain or any kind of leader always comes with some kind of pressure and responsibility but also a lot of excitement and reward. I would say off the ice, I made it my goal to be a solid balance between someone who can be both personable and respectable. I always believed that having meaningful relationships off the ice would always translate to better performance on the ice. I built meaningful connections with all the girls on my team and I always wanted to make sure everyone knew I would be there for them when they needed me and could talk about things other than hockey. I also made sure that it was clear that it was important that everybody respected each other in every aspect. We respect the team, and the team respects the captain. Being a captain doesn’t mean I am better than anyone or I get to boss people around. To me, it always meant acknowledging and considering everyone’s opinions and feelings and then leading by example. On the ice, I made it my goal to make playing this sport a privilege. We get to play, which is exciting, and we want to win, and we want to take it seriously to win, but also have a balance between taking it seriously and having fun with one another. This is a really fun time in our lives, being in college, and the fact that we are able to be at such an amazing school and play a sport with some great people is really exciting. What is really challenging is that playing time isn’t consistent across any team, and I knew that, so I did my absolute best to at least put a smile on any teammate’s face every day and remind them that they are important and worthy regardless of ice time.
The team was able to bounce back after a down year in 2023. How were you guys able to accomplish that and what do you think about the outlook of the team going forward?
Each year, I felt I was able to grow as a person and a player. Of course, some years turned out better than others in terms of the number of games we won and making the [NESCAC] playoffs. I would say this season, we really honed in on reiterating our ‘why.’ With a long season like the one we have, it is really important to take a moment for every player to ask themselves why we do what we do, and why we commit so much time to this sport. Everyone has their own ‘why’ and when people have their ‘why’ in mind and they remind themselves, we take that and use it as motivation to say, ‘why not us’ each game. It is just such a great grounding mechanism that we had. I and the other captains really found this to be critical to collectively get everyone back on track as a unit so we can maintain the grit to play hard and to win as one. For the team going forward, I have no doubt that they will experience a ton of success. Everyone has worked so hard this season, and as long as they continue to carry that hard work forward and build on it, along with building a positive community that can have fun but also take in and give constructive feedback, then they will do amazing things.
What have been some of your favorite moments?
I truly view the team as my second family. I know that is something that is said often, but the team is truly so special every year I have played at Conn. Especially being far away from home, it was so nice to be a part of a team that is really welcoming and lively and girls that were older than me when I joined the program. They are always rooting us on, and I am still in touch with them. I feel like I have made a lot of lifelong friends on my team that will be on my life journey forever beyond Conn. Some of my favorite moments I would say, every bus trip was super fun and lively. We were really able, at times, to put our phones away and just enjoy each other’s company. Also, team dinners. Each one that we had was always super special. We were all able to be in the moment together. One in particular, we were able to have at Coach’s house, which was extra memorable, and we always joke that after that dinner was the turning point of our season when our season was getting better. We all find that very memorable and a key turning point of last season. Lastly, I would say my favorite moment or favorite game would undoubtedly be the Middlebury game that we won. It was really cool to leave my career, having beaten them twice, two years ago and then this year. This year was pretty special because we beat them on a Saturday after losing to them the day before. It was pretty incredible that we were able to come together to fight to win that game, and that turnout most definitely would not have happened unless we came together like we did to play to win, play together, and just believe that we could do it. Yeah, I will remember that forever.
Does the team have any special bonding activities, traditions, or pre-game rituals?
The team binding has always been one of my favorite parts of the hockey season. Before the season starts is always a crucial time to really get to know the new girls that are coming in and do a lot of stuff together before we are practicing every day, classes start to pick up, and stuff like that. Some of our favorites have been walks on the water at Groton Long Point or walking the route along the Coast Guard, or we have gone to the Cider Mill in Stonington. We have done a Pickleball tournament, haunted houses, all of those things before the season starts. For pregame rituals, honestly, nothing crazy with our team. Everyone has their own superstition. There are some people who are headphones in, super hyperfocused, and some people who are more lax, dancing around, letting loose. I find that I fall more into the pool of letting loose before games. I have learned that if I am too hyper-focused, I am anxious when I play. Everybody has their own thing, and everybody respects it, which is great. My favorite part is also blasting music and hyping each other up before going out on the ice. That is some of the best times, and listening to some of our pregame favorites like Cardi B, or the classic hockey songs like ‘Shipping up to Boston’ or ‘TNT,’ all good stuff the team enjoys. But all the hyping up before going out to play is super memorable.
What advice would you give an athlete to become the best possible player they can be?
I would say my best piece of advice for athletes would be to play for the team and not for the individual. My favorite saying growing up was, ‘play for the logo on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back.’ I always found that to be impactful because I find that there is more success and more happiness that comes from playing for the team and the betterment of the team instead of everyone having their own relationship with the sport, the coach, and the ice time that they get. I think that if the mindset is playing with the team, having fun with the team, and putting the team first, then there is not only better success within the team but overall better success of players.
Do you have any post-graduation plans?
As my time at Conn winds down, I will then start my new chapter, and I will be working full-time as a client services associate at AlphaSights on their capital markets team in their New York City office. I am super excited to carry forward all that I have learned from Conn, both in the rink and in the classroom, into the corporate world.
Is there anyone you like to shout out or any last comments you would like to make?
There are so many people to thank but I first want to start with all of the coaches I had growing up. From Saber Hockey, Team Illinois, and the Chicago Mission for shaping me into the player I am today. I want to sincerely thank the coaches here at Conn: Coach Steele, Coach Taylor [Ham], and John [Pirla], our trainer, for believing in me as a player and for your consistent support these past four years. I am genuinely so lucky to be a part of a program that is really going to be hard to say goodbye to. Also, all of the friends, professors, and advisers here, especially Persephone Hall and Jillian Marshall, who have supported me and shown up to countless games, cheering on the Camels at the glass. Last but not least, my family. My brothers, who have definitely made me tougher, and my parents, who flew out to watch me play every weekend this past season really gave me the chance to play this sport in the first place. There have just been so many amazing Camel moments that I have really lost track, and I just want to thank the Conn community for making it all so special.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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