Coming into the 2025-26 NCAA women's hockey season, RIT has their share of new faces on their roster. And while there's always excitement surrounding incoming recruits, there's also excitement surrounding the next steps for last year's graduates. From RIT's outgoing group of seniors, five will continue playing professionally next sesaon.
Among those players are Jordan Bear and Kyla Bear who will play in Sweden's NDHL with Örebro HK, the same league Mia Tsilemos will play in with Hammarby. Also playing overseas is Kylie Aquaro with EV Bozen Eagles in the EWHL, while Sarah Coe will attend training camp as a free agent invite with the PWHL's Toronto Sceptres.
RIT head coach Celeste Brown believes it's a sign of the work her program is doing to help prepare players for the next step, and opportunities that now exist.
"Over the four years we've been able to develop players and partner with them to take these opportunities and pursue these opportunities, where maybe previously that wasn't always the case," said Brown.
Brown believes more players will be looking to continue their careers and stay in the game in Europe with future opportunities to play in the PWHL as a motivating factor.
"Now more than ever women coming out of the college game want to conintue to play and that's a spark from the PWHL. It opens their eyes to like, yeah let me go play for one, two years elsewhere and see then if I can get into that league."
Some NCAA programs have consistently proven to be places where athletes are encouraged to continue playing the game they love by going abroad, and RIT is certainly in that conversation.