Who would have thought that an old refrigerator box, an axe grinder and a man named Toots could have created an honorable mention All-Ivy ice hockey player?
Those things combined did just that, giving Sarah Hood '98 the chance to both play and thrive on Dartmouth's women's ice hockey team.
When she was just three years old, a man named Toots, a neighbor of Hood, "would come over and make me an ice rink," Hood recalled. "He rounded the tips of my figure skates with an axe grinder and used a refrigerator box as a penalty box."
That was Hood's first experience playing hockey.
These days, Hood is a starter on Dartmouth's women's hockey team, tallying 18 goals and 23 assists for 41 points this past season to make her the second leading scorer on the team.
She has also proven her talent under every condition. In the final game of this past season against Northeastern, a game that was to determine whether the team would go on to the ECAC tournament, Hood put away the goal that tied up the game with just 21 seconds left in regulation.
After the first sudden-death overtime, the score was still tied. It was at 11:01 into the second overtime when Hood flipped in the game-winning goal to send the Big Green to the semi-finals of the ECAC tournament where they lost a close game to the UNH Wildcats.
The road to Dartmouth hockey, however, is equally as interesting as her start in the game.
Over the course of her years before Dartmouth, Hood played with maybe one or two other girls. Ice hockey was not a very popular sport for young girls, and there were only boys' leagues to play in. Hood joined right in and by high school was starting for the L'Anse hockey team.
"It was the same group of boys the whole time. I had known them since I was five. They never thought of me as a girl. I was just Sarah," Hood said of her experience playing with boys.
Hood adjusted quickly to her teammates, changing in the women's bathroom throughout these years and learning that "there was always a person or two who felt threatened or thought it would be fun to hit me," she said.
Hood also came to the realization by high school that she would never be bigger than her opponents. For some such a realization would lead to discouragement, but Hood responded in the opposite manner.
"I learned to make the right plays because I thought my way around it," Hood said of her strategy to beat out bigger, faster opponents. "I couldn't bowl my way through them."
This thought process has become natural to Hood. When Dartmouth came knocking on her door, she picked it up and brought it with her to New Hampshire.
And all of a sudden, Hood was looking at an entirely different game.
"Having no checking [in women's hockey] really changes the dynamics of the game. It was hard to get used to," Hood said.
Hood's determination and hard work have paid off for her, though.
"Her commitment comes off both on and off the ice," teammate Jessica Clark '98 said. "She works really hard in practice and when one person works hard, the rest do, too. She pushes us."
"It's been nice, though," Hood said. "None of my teammates [in high school] gave me crap but there was a lot I missed out on like the locker room camaraderie. It's nice to be included."
Between fall preseason and winter regular season, Hood has enough to keep her hands full. But hockey is only the beginning of her life.
Once hockey season comes to a close, Hood moves across the street from Thompson Arena to Leverone Field House, where she spends afternoons competing for the Dartmouth track and field team.
Track Coach Carl Wallin "knows everything there is to know," Hood said. "It was a difficult change to come here. In high school track went from when the snow melted to when school got out. Sometimes that would be four weeks. It was a lot less intense, too."
But again Hood has adjusted to the new situation and has found success in her second sport.
Because she plays two sports, Hood must train three seasons each year and therefore is at home in Michigan working at, what else, a hockey camp this summer rather than taking part in sophomore summer.
"I dismissed sophomore summer from the beginning, because I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. I would like to be there if I could but not enough to quit a sport," Hood said.
As for the future, Hood hopes to stay in hockey as long as possible and at the highest level possible.
"If this means going to Canada to play in the women's league there, I'll do that," she said. "I guess I'm going to have to find some type of job, too, to fund my hockey playing."
For now however, Hood just looks forward to yet another season wearing the Dartmouth green, and hopes for a repeat of her first hockey season here with another shiny Ivy Championship ring.
