Allison Curry is committed to ice hockey. How do we know? Curry commutes 90 minutes from Kent Island to Rockville three or four days a week for two-hour practices with her under-19 Washington Pride major junior travel team.
That makes for some long days given all she does at school. Many nights, Curry, a senior at Kent Island, doesn’t get home until 9 p.m. That’s on top of the long hauls on the weekends for away games against teams scattered across New England, Ontario, and Quebec and tournaments in Vancouver and Europe.
Curry will get up at 5:30 a.m. to do homework, and she usually has a lot of it. She carries a 4.29 grade-point average. “When I get home, and if I feel brain dead for the day, I will just shower and go to sleep,” Curry explains. “It’s definitely a grind to keep my grades up and stay super committed to all the clubs and things like that.”
Curry balances her academics and extra-curricular activities nicely. The 18-year-old takes advanced placement courses in physics, calculus, and computer science and is active in the Spanish Honor Society, Math Honor Society, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and student government.
Curry has also played on the school’s co-ed ice hockey for four years as well as the varsity softball team for three. Kent Island Athletic Director Daniel Harding praises Curry for her dedication to clubs, academics, and athletics. She even played varsity soccer as a freshman, and earned Bayside Athletic Conference Honorable Mention honors. “She is great at anything she does,” Harding says. “She is in that elite category for student-athletes that we’ve had here. She is an amazing athlete.”
With former Pride players like Olympian Haley Skarupa providing inspiration for Maryland girls, Curry is looking to take the next step and play hockey in college.
The 5-foot-5 Curry intends to play at one of two Division III schools: Hamilton College in Massachusetts or Wesley University in Connecticut. “It will be my last four years to be competitive with hockey unless I go farther and play on the national team,” says Curry, who’s interesting in majoring in pre-med and becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
This season marked Curry’s third playing on the under-19 Washington Pride team.
Games started Labor Day weekend and the season finishes with a trip to the USA Hockey Nationals in early April. She plays a vital role for the Pride as a gritty forward.
“Her work ethic and tenacity are her strengths,” Washington Pride under-19 Coach Kush Sidhu says of a player who has competed on boys teams for eight years, including four on the Kent Island High team. “She’s really difficult to play against,” he explains.
“She puts a lot of pressure on the opposition,” he adds. “She is relentless and a blue-collar, grinding type of player. Those type of players are invaluable.”
When the Pride’s hockey season is over in April, she shifts to excelling for Kent Island.
She’s a three-year varsity performer who’s in the infield or outfield.
Curry missed the first part of the 2017 campaign with a broken arm, and Buccaneers’ Coach Justin Lewis couldn’t wait to get her in the lineup.
“Once that cast came off, I said, ‘Are you throwing yet? Are you throwing yet?” he recalls. “When she came back from her injury, she was a huge boon to us. She is in the discussion as the most important player on our team.”
