More than 4,000 miles from home, Buffalo State’s Viivi Vaattovaara is embracing her leadership role with the women’s ice hockey team and making the most of her experiences.
The junior team captain is doing exactly what she set out to do when she decided to transfer to Buffalo State in the fall of 2014. The Bengals are currently 13-4-0 and have already set a program record for wins in a single season.
Viivi originally enrolled at Division I University of Connecticut, but after her freshman season, the Huskies turned over their coaching staff and she no longer felt the program was the best fit for her. After considering hockey options in Sweden, Viivi connected with a Buffalo State assistant coach that she had formed a prior relationship with during her initial recruiting process. After visiting campus and meeting head coach Candice Moxley, Viivi believed she had found a new “right fit.”
“I saw a program that had not had a lot of success, but could tell Coach Mox had a vision and a plan to develop a winning program,” Viivi said. “I felt like I could be one of the pioneers to help build the program.”
In her second season this year, she was voted the team’s captain and is anchoring the Bengals’ defensive unit that has allowed just 1.82 goals-per-game. She also has four assists and a plus-10 rating.
“Viivi was unanimously voted team captain by her teammates for this season,” Moxley said. “She is our rock in the locker room and on the ice and displays a maturity that is a calming force to help push us in the right direction.”
Long road to Buffalo State
Born in Veikkola, Finland, about 20 miles west of Helsinki, Viivi attended kindergarten and first grade in the United States while her mother Helena completed her veterinary residency in Davis, California. After her mother completed her residency, the family returned to Finland and her parents continued to operate their family-owned veterinary clinic.
Viivi, sister Vilma, and brother Ville, along with her parents returned the United States again when her mother was offered a teaching position at the University of California-Davis. This time the family stayed for three years, while Viivi completed grade four through six, before returning to Finland to again reclaim a more hands-on role with the vet clinic.
This was when Viivi finally shifted her focus from the sport of swimming to ice hockey. When she reached high school, she and her sister Vilma (one year older) left home and moved into an apartment about an hour north in Lyseon Lukio where the both excelled on the ice and in the classroom.
By age 15, Viivi was already playing in the top women’s hockey league in Finland, and during the summers attended numerous hockey camps in the United States and Canada, including stops in Buffalo, Rochester, St. Catharines and Minnesota.
After Vilma committed to play goalie for Division I University of New Hampshire, it was Viivi’s turn the following year to find an opportunity to further her hockey and educational careers in the United States.
“I always played on the same team as my sister and we are so close, I originally planned to join her at UNH,” Viivi said.
Those plans changed after Viivi attended an International Hockey Experience Camp in New Hampshire where she was recruited to Division I UConn.
“I enjoyed my visit there and it just seemed like the right fit, and I thought it was finally time to separate to spread my wings on my own,” Viivi said.
Although she had a positive experience, after the coaching change at UConn, she decided she would be happier at Buffalo State and has not looked back.
Staying connected
Viivi continues to stay connected with family despite being so far away.
“I talk to my sister on the phone all the time,” she said. “It is difficult to get together often with both of our schedules, plus neither of us drive very reliable cars that we would trust to make the long road trip to see each other.”
As for being so far from her parents, it presents its challenges, but the 21-year old takes things in stride.
“It is common in Finland for students to leave home and move into apartments in high school, so even though we were only an hour away, it helped prepare me for college and being away from home,” Viivi said.
In addition to being able to travel home during the summers, her parents have also had the chance to come see her play in the States. Her mother annually attends a veterinary conference in the United States and her parents time it so they can stay to see their daughters play.
A unique experience
This past summer, Viivi was afforded another new experience as she traveled to Rosario, Argentina to compete is the FIRS Inline Hockey Senior Women’s World Championships where she helped Finland to its best ever finish, placing fourth.
In seven games played, she finished with two goals and three assists, including registering an assist in the team’s 3-3 tie against the United States.
Although she had been involved in training camps for ice hockey, this was the first time she was able to represent Finland in international competition and it carried a special meaning.
“It was significant to be able to represent the whole of Finland,” Viivi said. “It was an amazing opportunity to experience another part of the world, but to achieve the best result we have ever had made it even more meaningful.”
It was also a valuable opportunity for Viivi to experience yet another culture.
“It was amazing to visit another culture and experience different foods and customs,” Viivi said. “People there spoke very little English, but we were able to find our way with a lot of help from Google Translate.”
Academic success
Viivi, who speaks English without any detectable accent, has paired her success on the ice at Buffalo State with extremely high academic achievement. In addition to serving as the team captain for the Bengals during their record-setting start to the season, she also achieved a perfect 4.0 grade point average in the fall while completing 20 credit hours as a bio technology major with a minor in psychology.
Originally a business major, she was a little behind schedule to graduate in May 2017, so she took the heavy course load to get back on track. She also used some unusual motivation to achieve straight A’s.
One of Coach Moxley’s team rules is to allow the players with the highest grade point averages from the previous semester to serve themselves first at meals on road trips. After posting a 4.0 during her first semester, Viivi’s GPA “slipped” to a 3.82 during the spring 2015 semester, which was only good for fourth-best on a high-achieving women’s hockey team.
“I wanted to eat first on road trips,” Viivi said. “I didn’t like not going first last semester, so I decided I needed to get a 4.0 this semester.”
What does the future hold?
Viivi will graduate next spring and is keeping an open mind for her future plans, although she has every intention of furthering her education in medical school.
In addition to deciding between pediatric surgery, sports medicine, or a host of other potential areas of interest, she will also need to decide where she wants to study. Medical school in Finland is free, but it is a six-year process, versus the costly option of remaining in the United States, but completing a program in just four years.
For the time being, Viivi is just focusing on the task at hand of propelling the Bengals’ women’s hockey program to new heights while making sure she will continue to be able to eat first on road trips.
