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When she graduates this spring, Alicia Barry, the captain of the Quinnipiac University hockey team and a 2014 91���� graduate, will be done with the sport.

It’s not a reflection of her skill; there are plenty of options she could pursue, especially with her impressive resume, which includes four years of varsity hockey at 91����, the last of which she served as co-captain, and four years playing Division 1 hockey at Quinnipiac. Instead, Barry is putting a cap on her career on the ice because she has an equally bright one in the corporate world.

Barry, 22, is a Computer Information Systems major, a field that, at its most basic level, serves as a bridge between the programmers writing the computer language and the businesspeople using the software. For Barry, a pragmatic and goals-oriented leader, it’s a perfect match.

Though she said she isn’t the “most outgoing person in the room,” Barry said the particulars of her business field, and the ability to act as a liaison between traditionally insular coders and more effusive businesspeople, is one she has been prepping for, in a way, both in the classroom and the locker room.

Barry plays defense and shares her Quinnipiac co-captain role with Melissa Samoskevich, who Barry credited with being “very outgoing,” while Barry remains more neutral, more of what she called a “peacemaker for the rest of the group.”

“We balance each other out,” Barry said. “I step back and see both sides of the issue that need resolving, whether it’s with teammates or coaches.”

This, of course, feeds right into her post-college aspirations. “I bring the problem solving with my major, and the ability to be that analyzing, detail-oriented captain,” she said. “Although I’m a CIS major, I’m taking classes with other business majors,” she explained. “Whether it’s entrepreneurship, finance — they group us together. You have to be able to work and adapt with people who do not necessarily think like you.”

“Now that I’m a captain,” she added, “Being able to have that trustworthy relationship with teammates and coaches, [I] kind of have to be that middleman, to have them [coaches] trust you as much as your teammates trust you.”

That trust and respect are nothing new for Barry; as the co-captain of “24 girls with 24 different personalities,” Barry said she’s “run into issues,” but “at the end of the day, we’re on the same team and working for the same goal.”

That goal, right now, has Barry, from Hanson, Mass, positioned strategically to join the business world. In fact, she was offered a position with OneBeacon Insurance, where, last summer, she worked as an intern in the company’s Canton, Mass office. She spent the summer working in the IT department. After the internship, she felt confident she didn’t want to pursue a career in the insurance industry, and that she wanted to get into consulting and project management, “traveling and implementing software for businesses in the country and around the world.”

The obvious link – she is an effective communicator and liaison – belies another important theme in Barry’s life: she’s an incredibly hard worker.

Consider, for instance, the classes she’s taken: Intro to CIS, Database Programming and Design, Advanced Excel Programming, Enterprise Systems, Optic-Oriented Analysis, Optic-Oriented Programming, Web Development, and Mobile App Development, to name a few. All while practicing from 2:00 – 5:00 every day and facing off against Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) teams such as Clarkson, St. Lawrence, Cornell, Colgate, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Brown.

Pair that with her accomplishments in the rink: in her first year at Quinnipiac, she was named to the ECAC All-Academic Team, and was the only player to log 37 or more games without recording a single penalty. In her sophomore year, she was named a Quinnipiac Scholar-Athlete, blocked 19-blocked shots, scored the first goal of her career, and tallied a game-winning assist in the ECAC regular season-clinching 9-0 win over Union.

So while it’s clear she can put up the numbers, Barry’s got a whole other realm to tackle when this year is finished.

Though with a tinge of sadness she said she’s “not wishing this year away, because it will be a hard thing to part with,” she said, “I’m so invested with my career, I haven’t really pursued any options for playing after, competitively at least. Competitively I’m done, which I’m okay with.”