Ice Hockey

Goalkeeper Cariddi reflects on 1st start, making Syracuse roster

Amanda Cariddi was done with her pregame routine.

She checked the tape on her stick, watched the ice for a few minutes, visualizing saves and breakaways, and played soccer with her teammates in the locker room.

Cariddi was halfway into her pads, five minutes before warm-ups, when Syracuse head coach Paul Flanagan pulled her out of the locker room before Saturday’s game.

He told Cariddi that she would be making her first career start.

“It was honestly good for me to find out five minutes before,” Cariddi said. “You don’t have all that time to think about it. I just got in the moment, got in the zone and went for it.”



Though Cariddi spent her first two years at Syracuse on the club ice hockey team, she joined SU’s Division I team midway through last season. She’s held a backup role since then, but made her first career start on Saturday, posting 23 saves and conceding just one goal. Hockey had always been a part of her life, but she gave up the dream of playing NCAA hockey — only to eventually wind up on a Division I team.

“I think it’s pretty neat to have someone who comes in here and appreciates every single thing that a Division I program affords these kids,” Flanagan said. “And she made the most of it.”

From a young age, Cariddi was begging her parents to take her to the rink and lining up in goal in her driveway for her brother to whip shots at her.

As she grew up playing on multiple teams, it was clear that Cariddi had talent, but the pinnacle of any North Adams, Massachusetts native’s hockey achievement was D-III.

Before her senior year at a local technical high school, Cariddi tried out for the Boston Shamrocks of the Junior Women’s Hockey League and decided to forgo her senior year to move to Boston and play. But the day before she left, the team canceled her contract.

“She was extremely upset,” said Barbara Cariddi, her mother. “A lot of kids would have let that crush them, but she didn’t.”

Academics came first to Cariddi and hockey second, so she passed up on D-III schools to play club at Syracuse.

While her parents were helping her bring her equipment to Tennity Ice Pavilion at the start of her freshman year, her father, Patrick Cariddi, said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if one day you got a chance to skate on the SU varsity team?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Patrick Cariddi recalls his daughter responding. “It doesn’t work that way.”

But two and half years later, an injury and a departure left Syracuse with just one goalie. Flanagan contacted Cariddi via Facebook message and asked her to join the team. Cariddi was out of shape and didn’t have the skill level that Flanagan would normally look for in a goalie, but he needed her.

The first few weeks of practice, she said, were “hell.” The other players were in mid-season shape, while Cariddi was coming out of the “beer leagues.”

“I got more shots in probably the first 15 minutes on the ice here than I had in a whole practice for club,” Cariddi said.

There were days she could hardly sit, walk or stand, but she made it through the end of the year and returned for her senior season. Prior to Saturday, her only appearance had been for 12 minutes in a blowout loss to Clarkson in October. She made three saves, but let in two goals.

But with one game to go in the season and a first-round conference tournament bye in hand, Flanagan sat usual starter Jenn Gilligan.

As Cariddi took the net during warm-ups, her parents, sitting in the stands, looked at each other in disbelief.

The goalie lives by the motto of “Don’t dream it, be it,” but years ago her goal of playing NCAA hockey seemed like more of a pipe dream. Now, she’s started a D-I game and turned into a celebrity in her hometown.

“This whole thing has been a dream come true for her, something that she never thought she’d get,” Barbara Cariddi said. “… She got to be the dream, so it was touching.”





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