By Sydney Wolf

Over the past four years of college hockey, goaltender Annika Lavender has learned to find success in the small things.

The senior from Plymouth, Minnesota, may not have seen too many wins on the ice with the Saint Michael's College women's hockey team by the time that she graduates this spring but just because there aren't many tallies in the win column doesn't mean that she hasn't found plenty of personal growth and success while participating in Division I athletics.

The Purple Knights have seen less than 10 total wins during Lavender's time at the school that is located in Colchester, Vermont, but the former Wayzata netminder has been absolutely lights out for her squad since joining the program as a freshman back in 2022. Since then, she has been breaking records left and right. She became the first goaltender in the New England Women's Hockey Alliance conference to register 3,000 career saves and she has broken the Saint Michael's records for both career saves and career minutes in net - so it's safe to say that although the team might not be finding success in wins out on the ice that Lavender has been an excellent addition to the squad since joining the roster four years ago.

"It's been a process of me learning how to be my best self. It was a different mentality adjustment but I've come to learn that there are multiple forms of success and the kind of success that matters most to me is just being able to play Division I hockey with my friends and teammates that I love - I love my team and I love my school," Lavender said. "I think what has enabled me to kind of step up my game and play my best is really just trying to have fun and to appreciate all the little things. You know, in 10/15 years I'm not going to remember what games we lost or won but I will remember the memories that I had with my teammates and just having a fun time - and you also just play better when you're having fun."

Despite facing a mind-blowing amount of shots night in and night out as the primary starter for the Purple Knights, Lavender still has an eye-popping .915 save percentage this season even with a 4.72 goals-against average. That certainly isn't a statistic that you see every day. She's not mad or bitter about having to face that many shots though and she knows that she can only control her own game when she's out on the ice.

"Something I've learned throughout my journey here is that if you have a negative mindset that it's really only going to bring you bad results. Actually, a little quote that I have on the back of my blocker now too, which is my favorite quote, is 'whether or not you think you can - you're right', so that's something that I really tell myself and I'm like 'if you just have a positive outlook, trust yourself, trust your teammates and honestly just focus on yourself and what you can do and what you can control, then you're doing well'." 

Lavender has had to make an average of almost 50 saves a night this season for the Purple Knights. In fact, she's even had to face over 60 shots multiple times throughout her career. Her personal best came in September of 2024 when she made 69 saves on 76 total shots against Clarkson. The Minnesota native is facing double to triple the amount of shots that other goaltenders around the league are facing every night, so her positive mindset and persistence in net is honorable.

"That's the fortunate thing about goaltending is that even if your team doesn't have success, you can still find little personal successes and wins," she said. "That's been something that's been cool to do and honestly was a factor in my decision to come here, I was like maybe I could go to a bigger school with a more well established hockey program and sit on the bench and not really make a whole lot of a difference but I could come somewhere like here that's new and looking for people to help kind of bring the program to another level and to really make my mark and that's what I've been trying to do here and I think I have, in some regards." 

Lavender was born in North Carolina and actually lived in Pittsburgh for a short while before her family eventually moved to Minnesota around the time that she was in first grade. At first settling in Eagan, Annika and her three younger siblings have all grown up in the Wayzata Youth Hockey Association after finding their family home in the Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth.

It wasn't out of the ordinary for Annika and two of her three siblings to become goaltenders, considering that their father was a club hockey netminder at the University of Michigan. Their mother, who was a collegiate tennis player at Kalamazoo College, tried to get them into tennis but hockey and lacrosse seem to be the sports that stuck the most.

Lavender would eventually start playing high school hockey for Wayzata High School in 2018-19 and 2019-20 as a freshman and sophomore. She didn't see too many minutes out on the ice at first, primarily playing junior varsity and sitting as a varsity backup, but that all changed once her junior season came around.

"I mean, retrospectively, I think I didn't come into my own as a goaltender until a little bit later. Right around after my sophomore year, I didn't play as much as I wanted to that year, I think I kind of hit my stride and figured some stuff out and then junior and senior year were obviously better for me," she said about her journey to becoming a starting goaltending for the Trojans.

Her first full season as the starting goalie on varsity came during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21 which meant that there were limited games played and extra rules around high school sports competitions but that didn't stop Lavender from posting a .911 save percentage and a 2.14 goals-against average through 17 games that year. Wayzata posted an 11-8-1 overall record but would eventually lose to Benilde-St. Margaret's in the Section 6AA semifinal match-up. Although it was a bit of a bummer to have to play during the pandemic, it gave Lavender a bit of time to regain a better appreciation for the sport and she was extremely excited to just be able to get out on the ice again after things were in limbo for so long.

The college recruiting process was a fairly long one for the Wayzata hockey player. She was originally a part of the group that could be recruited to play collegiate sports at a young age until the NCAA changed the rule that girls hockey players could not be recruited by Division I college coaches until the summer prior to the start of their junior seasons. Lavender was casually talking with a few schools prior to the rule change but then conversations had to freeze after the new law passed. Once her junior year came around, she was extremely proactive and diligent in her dream of playing Division I hockey. She reached out to a group of about 20 schools to send monthly updates on her progress - sometimes she would hear back from those programs, sometimes not.

At one point, Lavender was competing in an offseason tournament and she remembers talking to another player who said that she was committed to Saint Michael's College. This prompted the netminder to look more into the program which was still fairly new to the Division I women's hockey scene at the time. She then reached out to the coaching staff for the Purple Knights and remembers them eventually coming out to watch her play. Later on, she would take a tour of the campus in Vermont and she announced her commitment to the private, Catholic college before the start of her senior year of high school.

As a senior, Lavender remembers beating rival Benilde-St. Margaret's early on in the year which was a huge victory for the Trojans program. She recalls it being an entire team victory where everyone had to work hard to take home the win. The squad would go on to finish with a 17-9-1 overall record and their season would unfortunately end once again in the Section 6AA semifinals. The senior netminder posted a .913 save percentage, a 1.87 goals-against average and seven shutouts that year - which was good enough to be named a top-10 candidate for the annual Senior Goaltender of the Year Award in 2022.

"What I remember most about that group [at Wayzata] was that we all just really loved each other and I think that's what made my Wayzata experience so amazing was that the team culture was really amazing and everybody was always happy for each other," she said about her time playing high school hockey in Minnesota. "What had the most lasting impact on me from my time at Wayzata was just the camaraderie with the girls and I think that's something special you get while playing high school hockey that you might not get at prep schools because you grow up with those girls and everybody just had everyone's back and that was really special."

Following the conclusion of her high school career, Lavender made her way out to Saint Michael's in Colchester, Vermont. She loosely knew a few other girls that would be on the roster that fall but no one that she knew very well. Her former Trojan teammate Sam Mathe currently plays at Long Island University though, who plays against Saint Michael's during the regular season, and Elisabeth Gerebi, who played high school hockey at nearby Chaska/Chanhassen in Minnesota, would become a good friend of Lavender's and her eventual roommate at the private college in New England as well, so there were plenty of familiar connections that started to pop up once she made her way out to New England.

It was certainly a bit of a change going from one of, if not the biggest high school in all of Minnesota at Wayzata to a small, private college campus of about 1,100 undergraduate students. Lavender loved the small school feel though and it is now one of her favorite aspects of going to college there.

The Plymouth native didn't originally get to see the ice much in her freshman campaign with the Purple Knights in 2022-23, which is to be expected as a young goalie in college hockey.

"The first semester of my freshman year I didn't play much and then toward the end of that first semester I got a couple of minutes as relief and I did well with those and got my first start. Going into the second half I split time with the other starter and we kind of just went game for game," she said about her experience in Year 1. "It was an adjustment for sure [playing college hockey], and I mean everybody says that but you don't really get that until you're there. The level of play and everything is another step. You go from being a big fish in a little pond in high school to all of a sudden being a small kid on the playground, you're not really batting on top anymore."

The primary starter in net during her freshman season, Carissa Mudrak - also a Minnesota native - wound up transferring to Assumption after the conclusion of that year while the third-string netminder, Leah White, left for Division III Johnson & Wales University midway through the season, which left Lavender as the only returning goaltending. She stepped into the starting position as a sophomore and hasn't looked back since.

In 2023-24, Lavender wound up posting a .904 save percentage for Saint Michael's, despite facing over 1,000 shots that season and earning a 4.36 goals-against average. The Purple Knights unfortunately went a winless 0-35-1 that year but the Plymouth native was unbothered by that and decided to stick with her teammates throughout the process to try and help get the program where it needed to be. Compared to some netminders who may have been intimidated by the sheer amount of shots that were coming in every game, Lavender says that she was well prepared to play against some of the top skaters in college hockey after playing high school hockey in Minnesota.

"At St. Mike's, obviously the volume of shots is a little bit more [than what she was used to in high school hockey] so that was an adjustment but in terms of skill and shot speed, I think that growing up and playing through the high school system in Minnesota prepared me really well," she said. "I would always tell myself to try and make myself less nervous before games that 'everyone you're playing against is the same level you played against in high school, it's the same type of girls, you've got this' so especially playing against some of the top teams [in high school] with girls who were going to super big name schools like Ohio State or whatever, you're like 'I've seen this level of play before and I know what to do with it'."

Lavender stayed consistent and kept on posting excellent statistics as a junior and now as a senior with the Purple Knights. As a junior, the Plymouth native posted a 4.00 goals against average but an incredible .909 save percentage with a team that went 4-32. As a senior, Saint Michael's is currently 1-27 but the 21-year-old goaltender has a .915 save percentage despite a 4.72 goals-against average - if that demonstrates just how many shots she is facing every night.

Now in her fourth year of college out in Vermont, there are plenty of things that Lavender has loved about the school and about the hockey program. She loves the small school vibe of Saint Michael's and has formed great bonds with her teammates and with other student athletes who are all a part of a tight-knit community. She also loves getting to be near the mountains and being just a few hours drive away from many major cities in New England. She also says that the women's hockey program is so much different now than what it was from when she first stepped on campus. After all, the Purple Knights haven't been a Division I team for that long yet in the grand scheme of things. Lavender says that culturally there has been a huge shift from 2022 to now, especially when you consider that in her freshman season that there were still a few leftover Division III athletes on the roster from the school's upgrade from Division III to Division I women's hockey, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but that it obviously took a few full years for new players to be recruited and to come in. The culture has absolutely changed for the better, in her opinion, and everyone is taking hockey more and more seriously.

From her first day on campus to now, Lavender says that she is an entirely different goaltender after putting in plenty of work both on and off the ice during the college season and during the summers in between.

"I will watch film from back when I was in high school and I do not look like the same goalie at all," she joked. "Especially with getting the volume of shots that I do, you really learn. I think that being here has made me a tremendously better goalie. If you have any little flaw, it'll point itself out, so I've really been diligent in summer training and in practice to make sure I'm doing everything I can to give my team the best chance to win. I think throughout my four years that I've figured out some quirks and figured out some things and tried to find a type of goaltending that works best for me for sure."

Lavender is in the home stretch of the season now with the Purple Knights as the squad only has two weekends left of regular season hockey prior to NEWHA conference playoffs. The Minnesota native is savoring her last few games of college hockey before her life will end up going through quite a bit of transition over the next year.

The senior goaltender is double majoring in history and political science with a minor in economics and is currently applying to law schools at the moment. She has heard back from a few but is still waiting on decisions for a couple of her applications to determine where her future will take her next.

Depending on where her schooling takes her, she's hoping to stay connected to hockey in some way, shape or form. Whether that's playing on a club squad or helping to coach a team somewhere, she wants to stay within the sport as much as possible depending on what her work load will look like with law school. If she ends up being close to home, she has two younger siblings that are still playing hockey so it would be fun to be around them and their careers at the moment as the two of them are currently goalies. Her other sibling is now a senior in high school who is actually headed out to play college lacrosse next year at DePauw University in Indiana.

"Hockey will always be a part of my life and it's hard to approach this transition and start to not think of yourself as a player anymore but I've kind of conditioned myself to view it as one door closes and another opens, and not playing as much will allow me to explore other aspects of myself and find other ways to get involved with the game that extend beyond just playing," she said.

For now, you can catch Lavender and Saint Michael's College at home against Franklin Pierce on Feb. 13 and 14 before their final regular season series against Stonehill on the road the weekend after.