Lily Hillsgrove grew up between the sticks.
For as long as she can remember, she was a goalie. A soccer goalie. But before her junior year at Concord High school, a softball teammate and member of the hockey team had an idea: What if Lily swapped her cleats for skates?
“I said, ‘Why not?’ And I told my mom, and she’s like, ‘Why not? We can do it. We can try,’ ” Hillsgrove said.
Two years later, Hillsgrove not only earned the starting job in net for the Crimson Tide but has now won honors as the Concord Monitor’s Girls’ Hockey Athlete of the Year.
Hillsgrove said her experience in the soccer goal, as well as her time spent catching behind the plate, helped prepare her for minding the net in Everett Arena.
“I had the athletic ability to have my angles situated, and I was good at cutting off people’s angles and reacting fast to projectiles flying at me,” said Hillsgrove. “Hockey’s definitely way different because I’m on skates and I have padding, but I definitely had the instincts of what I had to do.”
The transfer of the goalkeeper instinct served as a running start for Hillsgrove. The only problem? It doesn’t help much on ice. And Hillsgrove didn’t know how to skate.
“The summer before I started, I would go ice skating with my teammate’s dad, and he taught me how to skate. And then he taught me how to skate with the gear on. So took a while, but it was fun,” said Hillsgrove.
But the senior said it took more than just skating lessons. She worked tirelessly before her junior season on synthetic ice to hone her craft. But even with all that work, things got off to a rocky start in her first game.
“I let in eight goals. One went through my five-hole. And I was not really happy with my performance,” said Hillsgrove. “But I was excited to finally be on the ice and after that, I was like, ‘I’m going to become better and I’m going to just improve and show people that new goalie can be an amazing goalie.’ ”
That summer, Hillsgrove put in the work. She notched up the intensity of her synthetic ice workouts and got more and more comfortable with the finer points of the sport. She attended goalie camps, played in the summer league and met with a goalie consultant.
“After that summer of training I did, I grew more confident with being on skates and my movements and knowing what to do. I learned more about the game and understood the game more than in my first season,” she said. “So I just felt more confident.”
The change from year one to year two was dramatic.
“She really just showed up in a huge way this season for us,” said Concord coach Tim Herbert. “It went from a kid who was just starting to play hockey to a legitimate goaltender at the high school level. She just has this unwavering work ethic, where if there’s something she needs to work on, whether it’s her glove, covering, dropping to the butterflying and moving horizontally across the crease, whatever it is, she just works at it over and over and over until she gets it.”
Herbert said that Hillsgrove stepped up when the team needed her to. In her junior year the team was strong defensively, and was able to cover the still-learning goaltender. But in her senior season, the loss of some players and a shift in playing style gave more responsibility for Hillsgrove to shoulder.
“We were a different team and her being a legitimate goaltender that could keep us in games, and she stole a couple of games for us this season,” said Herbert. “Without a doubt that was huge.”
Herbert added that Hillsgrove’s mental strength was something vital to the position and something she used with astounding proficiency.
“She has a way of processing, compartmentalizing and being able to move on after a tough loss or giving up a big goal,” he said. “And that’s something that I don’t know if it comes from her years of doing soccer or what exactly it is, but she has an ability just to let it roll off her shoulders and just focus on what is it she has to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
For Hillsgrove, the news that she won the award was a catalyst for the long list of people she wanted to thank for helping her find a new sport to love.
“I want to thank my mom, because she was there for my craziness and starting a new sport. And she took me places and bought some of my equipment and she always supported me. And I want to thank my teammates for being amazing and making this last season for me a really great one,” Hillsgrove said.
“And I want to thank the Brown family, especially Livy Brown and her father, Chris Brown, who helped me train and taught me the play and brought me into the game. And I want to thank my coaches and goalie trainer, Kevin Lacroix for teaching me how to play and for believing in me.”