As Merrimack defenseman and captain Raice Szott’s collegiate career draws to a close, it’s becoming clearer all the time that her legacy at the North Andover, Mass., college will last far beyond her playing days there.
A native of Daysland, Alta., Szott is a finalist for the Hockey Humanitarian Award for the second year running. This is also the third consecutive season in which Szott has been nominated, and throughout that span, Merrimack coach Erin Hamlen has marveled at the impact Szott has had on her Warriors teammates.
“They always watch each other and always want to emulate each other in a lot of ways, and they recognize how strong a sense of community our institution has and just how much we want to give back,” Hamlen said.
“People definitely watch what Raice does in the community and how impactful it has been, and it has really helped our team to value being in the community a little bit more and spend some time really putting effort into it.”
When interviewed for this feature, Szott asked to take a moment to pull out a list of all of her community work. That in itself might not separate her from the other four finalists for this year’s award, but the breadth of her involvement in the community is certainly something her teammates have taken on board.
Szott launched the Merrimack College Women’s Hockey Community Service Committee, opening up many local fundraising and volunteer opportunities. She has also coordinated fundraisers to help local nonprofits, like those for first responders as well as the Ellie Fund, a local foundation assisting people suffering from breast cancer.
Also among Szott’s commitments is volunteer work coordination for Merrimack’s Relay For Life as well as working with local girls hockey and after-school programs, plus Special Olympics Massachusetts. Additionally, she and her Merrimack teammates participated last October in a walk to raise Alzheimer’s disease awareness, and on Halloween, she and other Warriors student-athletes participated in a festive event benefiting Team IMPACT, a Massachusetts-based organization which matches college sports teams with children facing serious illness and disability.
Much of the volunteer work Szott has done during Merrimack’s 2024-25 season is a continuation of what she had already started. Among these are Skating Strides nights for Merrimack home games, raising breast cancer awareness in partnership with the Ellie Fund. Szott has also created a program designed to help young girls build confidence through ice skating and the sport of hockey.
As for the future of many of these initiatives, this is where Szott’s meticulous documentation of her work comes in handy.
“We have a lot of really good underclassmen who have expressed to me that, ‘Hey, after this season, we need to sit down and you need to show me all your spreadsheets with your contacts or whatever, because we want to continue this thing on,’” Szott said.
“That means a lot to me, knowing that others have seen this impact and gained that motivation to also give back to the community and keep these things going. A lot of our underclassmen are looking to carry this stuff on, and I’m hoping to come back and visit in a few years and hear about things I was a part of and enjoyed doing, and for girls I haven’t even really met yet to continue that on, that would mean a lot.”
To her, and to her Merrimack coach, as well.
“Raice is creating her own impact with what she’s doing, between linking our program with the community in both North Andover and across the country and internationally,” Hamlen said. “I just want her to be known as the selfless person she already is, who has been more than generous with her time and commitment to both our institution, and to young girls, young boys, hockey players, young people in all areas that she has had the ability to connect with, and with the individuals on our team that have a mentorship-type side of things.
“In the end, she has been somebody who has really connected people, she’s been somebody has given up so much of her time and energy to bring people from outside of the college into it to connect with our players and people around them, and just donating time for all sorts of things that, from a charity standpoint and a standpoint of giving time and effort to something that doesn’t necessarily directly benefit her. It’s just something selfless that she does. It’s her way of being really selfless and generous, and she’s the type of person you hope to have in your life, because they don’t think about themselves. They think about others.”
