The phrase “Once a Tommie, Always a Tommie” is a familiar mantra on the campus of St. Thomas University
No one embodies the expression more than 18-year-old Makayla Janelle—call her MJ— English.
A first-year defender with the women’s hockey team this season, one of the first stops on her hockey journey was with the Junior Tommies spring hockey program more than a decade ago.
She was six years old when she first donned hockey gear. She’s been on the blueline from day one.
“When I started in kindergarten, my Nana would take me to the Willie O’Ree every Tuesday after school for a public skate,” she remembered. “I started noticing there were hockey practices afterward during the winter. I was doing dance and gymnastics and all this stuff, and I said, "No…I want to play hockey.”
It was too late to start that season, but when her enthusiasm hadn’t cooled by the following September, her parents, Clay and Angela English, signed her up.
Good move.
She played novice-level hockey for the Keswick Valley Stars boys team and “I picked it up pretty quickly... I was doing all right,” she said.
She was drawn to defence right away. Thank an anonymous skater who was at those public sessions all those years ago.
“He was always there, and he could always skate so well backwards,” she said. “I thought it was so cool. So I tried, and I tried, and I fell, and I got back up, and eventually I picked it up. I want to keep skating backwards.”
As a smooth-skating rookie, she does it very well. Her hockey career has been going forward ever since. She cracked the junior Tommies at age six and moved on to a three-year stint up the road at Rothesay Netherwood School in Rothesay, where she played for former Tommies captain Kayla Blackmore-Simonds for two seasons. She called playing for the former Tommies star “the best hockey experience of my life.”
A Fredericton native and an only child, when it came time to make a decision on university, it was an easy choice, made even simpler by the fact she was awarded one of the school’s most prestigious awards, the President’s Scholarship.
It’s a four-year scholarship, valued at full tuition and renewable each year as long as the student maintains at least a 3.7 grade point average. The total value is $32,000.
“While academic merit is a top consideration, we also look for students who have significant achievements outside the classroom to complement their academic success,” said Ryan Sullivan, the school’s Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management.
“I applied for a few scholarships and sent in a few essays,” English said. “I saw Peter (Murphy, head coach) at school one day and I said, ‘What are you doing here?’”
He was there with director of admissions Michelle Wright to formally award the scholarship.
“I honestly cried,” she said. “I was really excited about that.”
“She had a great relationship with Peter from the beginning, and she felt like the STU program was a great fit for her,” said Blackmore-Simonds. “She felt like she was being cared about as a person; she could study what she wanted to study. All the way around, it was a great fit.”
That’s proven true so far. She’s enjoying her classes as she studies psychology and criminology and is enrolled in a philosophy course as well.
On the ice, she has yet to record a point and has registered just eight shots on goal through the team’s first 12 games. But she and Murphy both believe that will come with confidence.
“She’s a great skater... her skills are very, very high level,” he said. “We’re trying to get her to simplify things and not try to do too much with her skill level. She has all the tools. She’s only going to get stronger; she’ll only get faster. It just comes down to making good decisions and ‘Let’s just keep the game simple.’”
Everyone agrees that it was a good decision for her to come to St. Thomas.
“It’s kind of nice to go full circle,” said Blackmore-Simonds. “Lots of players are worried about a big NCAA commitment, but for her, it wasn’t about that. It was about finding the right fit and playing in a place that she felt was going to be really special for her. She never looked back from the moment she decided STU was the right fit for her.”
“I’ve never felt more connected with a team,” English said. “The whole experience of being back in Fredericton…it’s so nice to be here. I feel a little bit of pressure because I know there are a lot of people watching and a lot of people who are relying on me. But I feel like the whole team backs each other up. It’s a really good environment.”
After missing the Atlantic University Sport women’s hockey conference playoffs for the first time in two decades last season, the Tommies have undergone a resurgence. With a 10-3-1-2 record so far this season, the Tommies have already won two more games and scored seven more goals than they did in 26 games last season. They currently sit third in the AUS standings.