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Port Moody player is ready to take her game to ‘the next level’

One of the great rewards of working in community journalism is being able to tell stories before they get wider attention. Sometimes it’s our stories that spark that spotlight.
I first told our readers about Jenna Buglioni in 2017 when she was getting attention as a top ice and high school field hockey player.
Since then, we’ve caught up to her efforts playing for Canada at IIHF U18 women’s world championship, the start of her collegiate career at Ohio State University in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and various other minor updates about her triumphs and disappointments.
But alas, the Tri-City News — where this story first appeared — won’t be around to share Buglioni’s next chapter, as she prepares to go pro and help grow women’s hockey.

Port Moody hockey fans could soon be cheering for another pro player.

Jenna Buglioni has declared her availability for June’s Professional Women’s Hockey League draft.

In the Hockey News’ mid-season rankings in January, she was rated 15th of 72 top prospects.

Buglioni was actually eligible for the league’s 2024 draft, but she opted to return to Ohio State for a fifth season with the Buckeyes while she completed her Master’s degree in sports management. She was also the team’s captain.

Buglioni, who started her hockey journey playing with NHLer Kent Johnson in Port Moody Minor Hockey, won two conference and two national championships at Ohio State along with a cabinet full of individual playing and academic awards. She scored 164 points in 167 games and set a school record for career and single season game-winning goals. She also tied the program’s record for career short-handed goals.

To top it off Buglioni even sang the national anthem prior to her final regular season series for the Buckeyes.

Buglioni told the Tri-City News her decision to play an additional year of collegiate hockey has better prepared her for the anticipated rigours of the PWHL.

“I have gotten that extra time to work on skills and get more game experience that will be needed to make the jump to the next level,” she said.

More importantly, Buglioni’s academic pursuits have laid a foundation that will put her in a position to help grow women’s hockey even beyond her playing days.

“It is incredibly important that women are in leadership positions within our sport and sports in general,” she said, adding she hopes to coach in the NCAA when she hangs up her blades. “This helps show everyone that women are capable of filling those roles and making a difference.”

Ohio State came within 18.9 seconds of winning a third national championship — and second in a row — during Buglioni’s tenure when Wisconsin’s Kirsten Simms scored on a penalty shot to tie their Frozen Four championship final on March 30 then scored again 2:49 into overtime to wrest the title for the top-ranked Badgers.

Buglioni said the loss was “devastating.”

“We were so close to getting that outcome we wanted and it almost felt stripped away,” she said. “It’s what we work towards all season so to have the year and my collegiate career end like that was heartbreaking.”

Still, as the Buckeyes’ captain, it fell to Buglioni to comfort her teammates through her own disappointment.

“It was tough,” she said. “Obviously everyone was upset and there usually isn’t words that can take away that feeling. I just tried to provide support and tell the girls how proud I was of them.”

One of those girls is Coquitlam’s Jordan Baxter, a sophomore.

Buglioni said she and Baxter played together for the Greater Vancouver Comets when they were in high school and spending the past two years as teammates at Ohio State has brought their friendship and camaraderie full circle. She said she hopes their shared experience also inspires other female hockey players in the Tri-Cities.

“There are so many opportunities for girls to play hockey collegiately and I hope that they know they can do it.”

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‘It’s going to be OK’: Coquitlam student uses her cancer journey in senior project

This story originally appeared in the Tri-City News

A Coquitlam student who’s endured cancer three times is hoping some of her darkest moments will help light the way for other young people going through a similar health challenge.

Julia Dawson, a Grade 12 student at Dr. Charles Best Secondary School, has created a workbook for cancer patients and their families embarking upon Car T-cell therapy to treat their disease.

It’s a new regimen that uses a patient’s own T-cells to identify and destroy cancer cells with the help of genetic engineering.

Dawson had already beaten leukemia twice when doctors determined her third round with the disease was resistant to conventional chemotherapy.

Instead, they recommended removing T-cells — a type of white blood cell that fights infection — from Dawson’s body and retraining them to attack cancer cells before reinjecting them back into her bloodstream.
While Car T-cell therapy has been in clinical trials at Seattle Children’s Hospital since 2018, it was still new at BC Children’s Hospital.

Few resources

Dawson would be among its first candidates for the procedure. She said she didn’t know much about the unique therapy going in. Nor did her family, and the all the research they did on the internet just turned up highly technical articles from medical journals. Even her doctors weren’t quite sure what to expect for things like side or long-term effects.

“There was not a lot of resources,” said Dawson. “I was scared, but the doctors were optimistic.”
To remove her T-cells, Dawson was hooked up for four hours to a large device that “looked like a washing machine” by a tube inserted in her neck. Several weeks later the engineered cells were reinjected through a port in her chest. Then she had to stay in isolation in the hospital for a month rebuilding her immune system.

During that time, Dawson said she asked the nurses and doctors a lot of questions. She made notes of how she was feeling, the fevers and loss of memory and occasional anger and fear she endured.
Dawson said the experience was “like going through a bad flu.”

But she also knew what she was experiencing could be invaluable to someone else about to undergo the same treatment asking the same questions she’d had.

“I want to make sure others have the information so they don’t feel totally alone,” Dawson said.
Back at school and feeling better, Dawson pitched the idea of the workbook as her senior year Capstone project. It includes pages with information about the Car T-cell therapy, its side effects and symptoms, a pain chart and various activity exercises to help manage feelings of anger and frustration.

Dawson said she vetted the more clinical elements of the workbook with her doctors and nurses to ensure the information was accurate.

‘It really helps’

She said putting it together helped ease her own journey.

“It really helps by just putting it into words,” Dawson said, adding it also kept her positive and hopeful. “You realize things you’re going through are normal.”

Dawson said she prepared workbooks for youth counsellors at Camp Goodtimes, a special summer camp for young people living with cancer. BC Children’s is also including copies in a special welcome package for new Car T-cell patients and the hospital is in the process of securing grants to print more copies and distribute them to other institutions across Canada offering the therapy.

Dawson said the project has fuelled her determination to pursue a career in health care that begins when she heads to Simon Fraser University next fall to study health sciences.

“I want to help others know it’s going to be OK.”.

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