Item Statement:

The item that we have chosen to symbolize stewardship is a pair of hockey gloves. Stewardship is essentially the careful management of something that is entrusted into one’s care. Neumann University has entrusted the 21 girls on our team to care and help nourish the women’s ice hockey program. The spiritual theme for this year is stewardship and our team’s theme for this season is ‘all in’. The gloves represent both of those things. In order for us to be successful, it will require all hands on deck. We each have the responsibility to care for, to nourish, and to better the women’s ice hockey program this season.

Reflection:

Hello, my name Steph Grundy and I am a defensemen for the Women’s Ice Hockey team.  For my team, stewardship is defined by the way that we take care of the Women’s Ice Hockey program here at Neumann. Twenty-one of the women in this room are blessed enough to have been entrusted to care for and manage our team’s values, mission, and legacy. Our team defines stewardship by each and every person pitching in to leave the program better than when we first joined it.

Stewardship looks like many different things for women’s ice hockey. Sometimes stewardship is something as simple as cleaning up after ourselves at an opponent’s rink or being respectful towards officials, despite disagreement. Sometimes stewardship is something bigger, like volunteering to teach young girls how to play hockey or raising money and awareness for traumatic brain injuries.

On the ‘Beauty’ pillar here in the Mirenda Center, there is a little passage about, ‘Beauty for the Ancient Greeks”. Aristotle describes beauty as all parts working together in harmony. I think that this passage pertains most to our team as this is something that we exemplify regularly. By each and every person ‘buying in’ to everything we do, big or small, we show that we care for this program. By caring for this program, we pick each other up when we are down and we steward our resources to help each other become the best that they can be.  When all hands are on deck and working together, there are beautiful results.

One specific example of stewardship that comes to mind is last year after our last playoff game before we were eliminated. After an emotional loss, our seniors took off their jerseys for the last time. As a team we were extremely sad to see them go; however, we knew that they were leaving the program better than when they entered it. They became stewards of something that was not theirs to keep, but theirs to improve.

Women’s Ice Hockey builds and maintains a culture of stewardship by holding each other accountable. This ensures that every single member of the team is buying into the fact that we need to be better today than we were yesterday.  By sharing all of our talents on and off of the ice, we can leave everything better than when we found it.