Note: Classmates and teammates Janna Anctil, Kate Buesser, and Kim Cooper were individually inducted into the Hall of Fame but they chose to address the ceremony attendees as a group, thus the remarks of all three are included here.
June 3, 2017 – The first three inductees are all members of the Class of 2017. They grew up in Wolfeboro, each played 12 seasons of varsity athletics while at Brewster, and each went on to successful collegiate careers. In accepting the honor – Janna Anctil, Kate Buesser, and Kim Cooper – addressed attendees together.
Buesser is now a third-year medical student at Yale. Anctil is now works at the Rivers School where she recently coached the field hockey team to two consecutive New England titles. Cooper is currently a teacher and coach at the Berkshire School. Although they were each three season athletes, ice hockey was the one sport that brought all three together on the same team.
Buesser played field hockey and ice hockey and rowed crew before going on to play ice hockey at Harvard University, captaining the team her senior year, before joining the U.S. Women’s Ice Hockey Team and training for the 2014 Olympics. She talked about the coaches who impacted her, beginning with Jonathan Fouser, former head girls’ ice hockey coach at Brewster.
“All he did was take a chance on a girl wearing jeans at stick and puck [practice],” she said referring to Coach Fouser coming to the local rink to watch her as a middle schooler playing mostly with boys. “He was incredibly dedicated to the Brewster team and without having the opportunity to play at Brewster, playing a D1 sport and even for the national team, wasn’t going to be an option.”
“My biggest takeaway was the work ethic he drilled into us. He said you could have the most skill in the world but without the work ethic, success wasn’t even an option and that is something that has spilled over into my academic career.”
She continued, “I don’t remember scores of games. I don’t remember who scored the goals – no not the important things – I will always remember the dance parties choreographed by T White, sleeping in the back of the Microbirds on all of our hockey bags, the locker room fun we had. It’s a funny thing, 10 years have gone by but every time I see someone from our team we haven’t skipped a beat.”
Anctil, who played field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse, thanked associate Athletic Director Kate Turner, in attendance, who played an influential role in their lives. “We always knew it was an open door policy with you. And you always lent us your listening ear. You were always so invested in us as individuals and as athletes.”
She acknowledged her dedicated field hockey coaches Kim Yau and Janis Cornwell. “They put so much energy and time into the field hockey program – the slideshows before every big game, the team traditions, meeting out on the field and holding hands in the dark and screaming ‘we are a team’. It kind of seemed corny at the time but it was awesome. I think about those moments every day, and I strive to provide this same energy to my team at Rivers.”
Cooper praised head girls’ varsity soccer coach Matt Butcher for his coaching style reflecting on a practice drill when a teammate was frustrated with Cooper’s stellar defense. She overheard Butcher respond to the player: “Cooper is a monster defender; deal with it.”
“He didn’t say it to me but I heard it very clearly and that moment changed a lot of things for me,” Cooper said. That is one thing I think about when I coach and teach now, the consistent and subtle ways that he breeds confidence into us, it was all the time, and to every single person on the field and that is something I try to apply in my career now.”
She thanked current head girls’ lacrosse coach Melissa Lawlor for the opportunity to work with the Brewster team over the past five years at pre-season in Florida. “The opportunity to do that feels really great that I’m giving back … to be a part of that and feel like I’m still a part of that team, the lacrosse girls are so goofy and I know that we would fit in with them, our high school selves are those girls.”
Although the three spent their childhoods around the sports venues of Wolfeboro and knew each other, their paths weren’t necessarily set to lead them to Bobcat Nation.
“We didn’t expect to be here,” explained Cooper, meaning as freshman at Brewster. “We’re all from Wolfeboro. We all grew up here but we weren’t necessarily friends before we came to Brewster. And so I think the way we came together is kind of special.”
Cooper always knew she would come to Brewster. Her mom Laura Cooper was and still is a Brewster faculty member and would even be her assistant soccer and lacrosse coach, a relationship she described as “freakishly smooth.” Buesser was mentally prepared to go to another prep school but was grateful to come to Brewster instead with her brothers. Anctil had wanted to follow her three siblings’ footsteps and attend the local high school. Her parents insisted on Brewster, though, and she knew after the first day of orientation freshman year that they had made the right decision for her.
“Ten years out all three of us, we are all building our own careers and what this honor tells us is that the playful, competitive, dedicated, and sometimes ridiculous people we were in high school, were and still are valued by this community,” Anctil said.
Cooper added, “Wolfeboro, and by extension Brewster, this is our home and so when we come back, we come to see our parents but we also come back and see this place, to see each other, to relive the games we played, to retell the jokes we told, … and the friendships that we still have and will continue to have, and so thank you for this honor for giving us an opportunity to relive some of that and for spending the weekend together and keeping the dream alive.”
