Van Beusekom emerges as savior for women's hockey

Loretto, Minnesota is a small farm town about 1,231 miles from the Princeton campus. A road trip between the two takes you across eight states, past two great lakes, and over nine interstate freeways.

The connection: Princeton junior Megan Van Beusekom, a Loretto native and starting goaltender for women's hockey, the leader of a team that has gone from .500 to a national power in three seasons.

"Being from Minnesota, it's hard not to get into hockey," Van Beusekom said.

She is right. There are 11,842 lakes in the North Star State. In the winter, that means 11,842 natural hockey rinks, some much larger than others, all speckled across the state like the holes in a big piece of Swiss cheese. Not to mention all the man-made rinks. Heck, a couple Minnesota college students invented roller blades so they could practice in the off-season. Skates are as common as shoes.

As many young girls who loved hockey had to do, Van Beusekom started off playing for boys teams before attending a Catholic private school in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, about a half hour from her hometown.

In high school, Van Beusekom moved on to the Minnesota Thoroughbreds, a club team for girls 19 years old and younger in the state. Princeton took notice.

"We recruited [teammates] Annamarie Holmes, and later Nikola [Holmes], from the Thoroughbreds," Tiger women's hockey head coach Jeff Kampersal '92 said. "Megan was next in line."

The Holmes sisters, both seniors, and former teammate Jessica Fedderly '02 all played for the Thoroughbreds, kept in touch with Megan after enrolling in Princeton, and urged her to join them, Van Beusekom said.

The quartet brought with them a wealth of experience from their time with the Thoroughbreds. The team went 144-29-15 in the four years that were, in order, the final seasons for Annamarie Holmes, Fedderly, Nikola Holmes and Van Beusekom. In that stretch, the team never lost more than nine games in a season, never won less than 27, and made it to the national championship game twice.

Not a bad rsum, and Van Beusekom admits she sent it out to other zip codes, too.

"I wasn't planning on coming here," she said. "I was looking anywhere from the Midwest to Boston College to Brown. But the hockey is great here. The team is awesome. The coaches are great. And the academics aren't bad either."

Kampersal was glad she found her way to Jersey and that he found a reliable presence in one of the most difficult positions in sports.

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"Goaltending is so important," he said. "The sport should be called goaltending."

And it is easy to see the importance of that position for the Tigers. In her freshman year, Van Beusekom compiled just a 4-10-3 record in 19 games played, and the team finished just 13-13-3. Fellow goalie Sarah Ahlquist, then a sophomore, had a 9-3-0 record.

Van Beusekom and Ahlquist split time again last season. Van Beusekom improved her record to 9-8-0 in 17 games played and was named the Eastern College Athletic Conference's Goalie of the Week four times. Again, the team went as she did, finishing just over .500 and losing in the first round of the conference playoffs.

But now, as a junior, Van Beusekom is posting her best numbers yet. She has an 8-5-1 record in 14 games played and another Goalie of the Week award.

But most importantly, her team is ranked eighth in the country with an overall record of 14-6-2, and is a legitimate national threat.

Ahlquist and freshman Roxanne Gaudiel share time again with Van Beusekom, but since she came to Princeton, the Tigers have gone as Megan has gone.

"She is a brick wall in net," Kampersal said. "It is so important when we break down and make mistakes to have someone back there we can count on."

Princeton has six games left before the ECAC playoffs begin. Six games to try to climb the rankings and get closer to its goals.

"We're trying to win all of our games and win home ice," Van Beusekom said. "We can make it all the way in the playoffs, it's just a matter of whether we keep it together or not."

Loretto, Minnesota is 1,231 miles from Princeton. And the next time Van Beusekom makes the trip, perhaps she will have a championship trophy buckled in the seat next to her.