Callee Heywood is proof brains and brawn do mix.
Heywood, 21, recently returned home to Innisfail after completing both her collegiate sporting career and undergraduate degree at Union College in Schenectady, NY.
In addition to excelling as a multi-sport athlete, Heywood also succeeded academically - she was an All-ECAC Hockey Academic Selection and All-ECAC Softball Academic Selection from 2009-2011 as well as the Union College Student Athlete of the Year in 2010 and 2011.
“That was neat. They took 12 girls from the whole league – one from each team – and they chose from there,” she said of being named athlete of the year. “That was a great thing considering there’s Ivy League girls and all that.”
Heywood played for midget hockey in Innisfail for three seasons before moving on to the Airdrie Lightning of the Alberta AA Major Midget League in 2004-05. Heywood then travelled to Wilcox, Saskatchewan to attend Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, where she helped the Hounds capture provincial, Western Shield, Macs tournament, and Notre Dame tournament titles in both 2006 and 2007. After receiving a scholarship four years ago to play Division 1 hockey and pursue a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at Union College, Heywood headed south.
A centre, Heywood appeared in all 34 games for the Dutchwomen this season, finishing tied for fourth on the team in scoring with 4 goals and 2 assists. As a member of ECAC Hockey, a college athletic conference that operates in the NCAA’s Division 1, the Dutchwomen play against a number of Ivy League schools including Cornell University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, Brown University and Yale University. This season, they also played an exhibition game against Boston University.
The Dutchwomen’s record of 2-29-3 this season was good for last place in the 12-team conference, though Heywood sees signs of hope for the young team, which only began playing in Division 1 eight years ago.
“We’ve actually been doing really well the last couple of years,” said Heywood, the team’s “unsung hero” in 2008-09 and 2010-11. “But we’re just building up to a competitive D1 program.”
Dutchwomen head coach Claudia Asano, a Harvard graduate, had played two sports and was open to Heywood playing a second sport in the off-season. A softball player since she was four-years-old, Heywood began playing for the college’s Division 3 softball team once the hockey season was over in 2008.
“Instead of doing spring training with the hockey team, I actually got to go play softball,” she said, explaining the team would often travel to Florida for spring training. “It was great – I didn’t have to do the spring training for hockey.”
Heywood, a second baseman, quickly established herself as one of the team’s leaders, hitting .500 with a perfect fielding percentage in her first season in the Liberty League, while being named to the Liberty League All-Star Second Team in her final two. This season Heywood was also selected to play for the AIST (USA) team at Prague Softball Week in the Czech Republic. The team went undefeated through the round robin and semi-final before losing 2-1 to Argentina in the final.
“Even having softball as my second sport, being able to do that was a great accomplishment for me,” said Heywood, the only Canadian on the team. “I couldn’t believe that I got to go to put an American jersey on – that was just neat.”
This fall, Heywood will be on the road again – this time to start her graduate degree in biochemistry at Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown University.
