CONSIDERABLE NET WORTH
Goalie Maschmeyer following dream
As a little girl with dreams of hockey supremacy, goalie Emerance Maschmeyer set out to become the next Shannon Szabados.
“Growing up, she was my biggest idol,” Maschmeyer says of Team Canada’s starting netminder and two-time Olympic gold medallist in women’s hockey. “I wanted to follow her path completely.”
A decade later, the farm girl from Bruderheim, Alta. has stayed true to her word.
* Play minor hockey with the boys ( like Szabados), Check.
* Become the second female ( besides Szabados) to suit up in the prestigious Brick Tournament at West Edmonton Mall, Check.
* Make history as the second female ( besides Szabados) to tend the net in the Alberta Junior Hockey League, Check.
“It was awesome for me that Shannon was local,” says Maschmeyer, who watched Szabados play for the AJHL Fort Saskatchewan Traders. “I got to see this other female goalie making these highlevel male hockey teams. That’s exactly what I wanted to do.
“I watched her do it and I was like, ‘OK. I can do it too.’
To that end, Maschmeyer is one of 34 players competing this week at Hockey Canada women’s development team selection camp on the outskirts of Calgary.
With every practice, with every scrimmage, Maschmeyer inches closer to her ultimate goal of representing Canada at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea ... and beyond.
“Since I was little, I’ve visualized being in that gold-medal game at the Olympics,” she says. “It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember.”
Growing up fourth in the batting order of five hockey-mad siblings, Maschmeyer agreed to go in net for a game and made the mistake of telling her parents she liked it.
On Christmas morning, she awoke to find new goalie pads and a used blocker and glove under the tree.
According to her dad Arlan, his seven-year-old daughter politely thanked her parents and slinked upstairs to her room. There, she cried. “She appreciated the goalie equipment,” Arlan says. “But she realized that once you get the goalie equipment, you’re kind of stuck in goal.”
Stuck in goal, Maschmeyer flourished in mixed competition.
Always willing to support a fellow member of the goaltending fraternity, Szabados went down to the Brick Invitational Tournament to meet her 10-year-old protégé.
“It was cool to see another girl taking that path and making that team,” Szabados says. “Ever since then, we’ve stayed in contact. We’ve taken similar paths.”
As girls playing with and against the boys, they both took the path less travelled.
“The other team definitely never took it easy on me,” said Maschmeyer, who played seven games for the AJHL Lloydminster Bobcats. “If anything, it probably motivated them more, because they didn’t want a girl stopping them. So that was cool and a challenge. I told the guys on my team to just treat me like one of them. They were super welcoming.”
Super welcoming, and super protective.
“If anyone came in front of the net and tried to hack at me, they would get blown on their butt.”
On a road trip with her boys’ team in Grade 7, Maschmeyer played in Boston’s Chowder Cup. All tournament participants received a free tour of Harvard. On the spot, she pledged to one day attend the Ivy League school.
“Every day, I look around and can’t believe I’m there,” she says of attending the same university as Theodore Roosevelt, Barack Obama and Bill Gates. “I am so blessed to go to Harvard.”
In the classroom, Maschmeyer studies sociology and economics. On the ice, she posted an impressive 1.44 goals-against average last season in 20 games.
The 5-foot-6, 141-pounder also made her Canadian senior national team debut last year in the Four Nations Cup and won a silver medal in Sweden at the 2015 Women’s World Hockey Championship.
“She’s a little bit smaller,” Szabados says. “But she’s fast. She’s technical. She’s always in position, and she seems to have really good lateral movement ... Her skating is strong.”
These days, Maschmeyer, 20, still looks up to Szabados, but the relationship has changed. They recently went out for dinner with fellow Team Canada netminder Genevieve Lacasse and just hung out as peers.
“She’s an amazing goalie,” Maschmeyer says of Szabados. “But I want to prove myself there, too.”