Sara Greschner is only in her second year with the women’s hockey club but she has come up big in the last few weeks, helping her team earn a playoff date.

Scoring twice in the Dogs’ Feb. 9 game against the Lethbridge Pronghorns, Greschner now has four goals in her last four games. Two of those goals have been game-winners.

She now sits third on the team in goals scored with nine, and is tied with fifth-year Shelby Davey for the best plus-minus rating among Huskies forwards.

Greschner is no stranger to on-ice success. Back in 2011 Greschner was named the most valuable player for the Saskatchewan Midget AAA female hockey league. She played with the Saskatoon North Stars that season and racked up a whopping 40 points in only 28 games.

Greschner was still living in her hometown of Dodsland, Sask. while she was playing with the North Stars. She had to drive two hours to Saskatoon and back home just to get to practice, which the team held three times per week. She had to travel even more when the team played a game.

“I’d get back from the bus ride at three o’clock in the morning and head home and go to school the next day sometimes,” Greschner said.

“It was pretty busy, but my family was so supportive of it that it worked good. Mom and dad drove and I would sleep or do homework on the road.”

Greschner’s father, Tony, played in the Western Hockey League in the 1980s. Sara said if it wasn’t for her dad she probably wouldn’t have played hockey.

“When I first started I didn’t want to play. My mom said I would cry every time I was put on the ice but my dad made me keep doing it…. It definitely paid off,” Greschner said, adding that her dad was a coach for many of her hockey teams when she was growing up.

Greschner is proudly superstitious. She always puts her equipment on from left to right. What’s more, she applies fresh tape to her stick before every game and then puts the blade of the stick in the air, ensuring that it does not touch any floor surface until she gets on the ice, or else she will re-tape the blade.

“I just kind of did that one game and it worked out good and I kept doing it,” Greschner said, noting that her teammates often play practical jokes on her by pretending to knock down her stick.

While Greschner said that other practical jokes do go on in the dressing room, she was all too willing to blame her roommates and not herself for pulling them off.

“This year my two roommates, Brooke Mutch and Julia Flinton, put water underneath some of the girls’ helmets, so when they pulled [the helmets out of their locker] the water spilled all over them. It was pretty funny.”

It’s these kind of light-hearted moments that seem to keep Greschner playing her best hockey. She describes playing games as relief from everything else she has going on.

“It’s not a break, but it’s a relief when you get out on the ice and you don’t have to worry about any homework or anything. You just think about what’s out there and that is it. It’s my relax time.”

[box type=”info”]Sara and the rest of the women’s squad travel to Edmonton to take on the Alberta Pandas Feb. 15-17 in a best-of-three quarer-final playoff series.[/box]

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Photo: Calvin So