(excerpt from Northeastern news)
The siblings try to see each other every day. There are times when Skylar Fontaine, [Human Services and criminal justice major] a senior All-American defenseman, will be stretching in a corner of Matthews Arena. She’ll wave across the ice to her brother, Gunnarwolfe Fontaine, a freshman forward, as he’s taking the ice.
The big sister, 22, and her little brother, 20, are two of Northeastern’s hockey stars—one established, the other emerging.
“It’s been great to get lunch with him, which we did the other day,” says Skylar, who was happy that she and Gunnar were joined in one of the heated tents on campus by their mother, Deborah Tancrell, who drove up from their hometown of East Greenwich, Rhode Island. “I hadn’t seen him play or practice in the same area for three years. So it’s been great to be close to him again.”
Skylar and her No. 1 Huskies (18-1-1) are pursuing an NCAA championship, with the next step coming in a Hockey East semifinal against Connecticut Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at Matthews Arena.
She notes the divergent paths that led her and Gunnar to Northeastern—a hockey youth system that is far more advanced for boys than for girls. As Gunnar advanced from one league to the next, he moved from his Rhode Island home to Lawrence Academy in Massachusetts to the Chicago Steel of the U.S. Hockey League, where in two years he scored 46 goals with 54 assists over 105 games.
