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While most people spend Thanksgiving looking back on a great year, Boston College senior Sam Apuzzo spent time around the holiday looking to her future. Also, she was warmer than most of her friends

While a cold snap hit most of the Northeast in late November, Apuzzo was one of six current NCAA players invited to join the U.S. women’s training team at the Presidents Cup in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. As the 2018 Tewaaraton Award winner, Apuzzo is probably a senior season away from both full-time status on the U.S. team and playing in a professional league — both of which, the WPLL and UWLX, sent all-star teams to the IWLCA event to scrimmage Team USA.

The experience was, Apuzzo said, both exhilarating and oddly familiar.

“It was very competitive, but a good kind of competitive. Not like cutthroat, but more collaborative and everyone trying make each other look good,” said Apuzzo, who is the Brine/US Lacrosse Preseason Player of the Year. “That’s something we do at Boston College. We’re very competitive with each but we make it fun.”

In Florida, Apuzzo showed a glimpse of what she could do once her college career ends. In a Team USA intra-squad game, she scored twice and doled out two assists to lead her Blue side to a win. Then she scored two more goals against the UWLX all-stars. (In a great sign for Eagles fans, BC’s contingent dominated the weekend stats, with assistant coach Kayla Traynor and senior Dempsey Arsenault scoring four and two goals, respectively, in the Blue-White game and Arsenault leading all scorers with three goals against the UWLX.)

But while Florida foreshadowed Apuzzo’s future, her focus is singularly on the present, her senior season and the pursuit of an NCAA championship. The Eagles, once an afterthought in the ACC, have steadily risen in national prominence, including back-to-back appearances (and losses) in the NCAA championship game.

“We’ve been to the finals two times in a row and we haven’t won,” Apuzzo said. “We are always that blue-collar team, like workhorses, but now it’s like this switched is flipped and we’re the hunted. So now we have a certain swagger.”

Though Apuzzo scored 88 goals in 2018 on her way to becoming BC’s first-ever national player of the year, she believes she’s improved her game, an assessment confirmed by teammate Kenzie Kent.

Kent, the 2017 NCAA championship MVP, skipped the 2018 season to concentrate on hockey. She returned this fall to begin working together with Apuzzo. But she wasn’t quite prepared to see what Apuzzo had done while she was away.

“I learn from her every day,” Kent said.

Kent marveled at a wicked behind-the-back shot her line mate had developed, and the seemingly endless combinations of moves she now routinely showed off.

“Like going up from X,” Kent said, “faking shooting around [the goal] and then pulling back and shooting behind the back.”

Boston College coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said Apuzzo’s improvements as both a shooter and a dodger were exactly what she wanted to see.

“Sam is already so, so, so good,” Walker-Weinstein said. “We’re just adding some different shots, so she’s never predictable on film. She’s drawing the best defenders in the country, so we’re working on her stick work and footwork and how to shoot when you have defenders on you like flies.”

Walker-Weinstein noted that Apuzzo converted 159 shots into 88 goals in 2017, or about 55 percent — BC’s best mark. But Walker-Weinstein expects her to be better than that this season, especially with Kent, who obliterated the NCAA tournament scoring record two years ago, back on the field.

“Between 60 to 65 is very, very good,” Walker-Weinstein said. “We’re asking her to get stronger in terms of her shooting and really building a close connection with Kenzie. We want her to be more dynamic, more shooting, better percentage, more shots.”

Apuzzo matches up in practice against BC’s All-American defender Elizabeth Miller, the reigning IWLCA Defender of the Year.

“I like when she’s hard on me and pushes me around,” Apuzzo said. “That’s what it is going to be like in a game.”

But aside from improved stick skills, Apuzzo said she heads into 2019 with a different mentality. Her senior class — which includes Arsenault, Kent, Miller and five other key returnees — has lost two national title games by a combined four goals. Having so many elite players in place is a unique opportunity they don’t intend to squander. Whether Apuzzo repeats as a player of the year or retreats into the role of creator for her teammates, the goal is the same.

“It’s going to be amazing,” she said. “I’m excited to get started. I could not care less if I score three goals and my teammates score 1,000.”