January 20, 2009

By Dave McMahon
Special to USAHockey.com

One game of sled hockey was all Kelli Stack needed to know that the game is an extreme endurance test. At the end of every season, Stack and her teammates on the Boston College women’s hockey team compete against a local sled team.

The Eagles stap themselves on the sled, and they’re off. But not for long.

“Oh my gosh, it’s so tiring,” said Stack, a junior forward from Brooklyn Heights, Ohio. “I have a lot of respect for the sled hockey players. It takes a lot of skill. We have to switch players on the sled after about five minutes, and the players we’re playing against are out there the whole time. We never win.”

Stack also uses her talent on the ice as one of the top NCAA Division I scorers in the nation to bring good fortune to the Eagles. Along the way, she has become a potential candidate for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to the most outstanding player in women’s college hockey.

With 36 points (15 goals, 21 assists) in 21 games, Stack is among the nation’s scoring leaders. Her seven power-play goals also are near the top of charts, just two off the national lead.

Thanks to an offer from her older brother, Kevin, she’s been hockey-crazed since age 4.

“I was always at the rink with him,” said Stack, a member of the U.S. Under-22 Select Team. “He came home one day and said ‘Do you want to play hockey?’ and that was it.”

By that young age, Stack was beyond comfortable on skates. Her mom, Nancy, was a competitive roller skater. Kelli, Kevin, and sister Kim were efficient on four-wheeled roller skates as 2-year-olds. While Kim also took the competitive roller skating route, Kelli opted for the ice version.

“It was a pretty easy transition,” Stack said. “I remember going to learn-to-skate lessons and playing on my first Mini-Mite team when I was 4.”

Early on, Stack appeared to be on her way to playing in goal.

"I loved playing goalie,” she said. “I was supposed to be a goalie. But my parents didn’t want me to because they thought it would be too expensive. Sadly, I had to become a forward.”

Stack played on boys’ teams with the Cleveland Barons until her freshman year of high school. One of her teammates was Carter Camper, now at Miami University.

“We played on the same teams for five years, from about age 1o to 14,” Stack said. “It was fun playing with the Barons. I was always getting keyed on in games since I was the only girl on the team. The coaches told my teammates to make sure they protect me. I was usually one of the bigger players on the ice until the boys started growing in about eighth grade.”

When she began ninth grade, she played the first of three seasons with the Ohio Flames 19-U team. As a senior, she made a two-and-a-half hour drive (one way) to Michigan to play for Honeybaked.

“We did that two nights a week,” Stack said. “My dad put a lot of miles on his car. I would try to do homework, but usually I got my homework done in study hall at school, so I could sleep on the drive. We would usually get home at about one in the morning.”

Interestingly, Stack comes home from school and hangs her skates up for the bulk of the summer.

“I don’t skate that much at all [in the summertime],” she said. “Unless it’s a camp, I try to stay off the ice in the summer. I like to spend as much time as I can with my family.”

“I like to take a little break, too,” she said. “I think I would get burned out if I had to play hockey year-round.”

Part of that routine includes taking the family’s black lab, Horse, to the park. Since her brother served in Iraq for 16 months, she makes a point to keep her family close.

“It was tough,” she said. “I was still in high school when he was in Iraq. He didn’t get to see me play at all in high school and he missed my first year of college. My mom would tape the games and burn them to a DVD so he could watch them over there.”

Stack’s college choice ultimately was between Boston College and Wisconsin.

“I didn’t really know anyone at BC, but I loved it when I visited,” said Stack, a communications major. “I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Now when we have kids that come to visit, I try to be the best host I can be. I try to give all the little pointers to make somebody know what the school is really all about. You learn a lot of things once you finally get there.”

Stack handles her scoring duties with aplomb, sniping at a rate of nearly 25 percent.

“I always had a lot of pressure on me to score the big goal or set up the play to score the big goal,” she said. “I’d rather be the playmaker and set somebody up than actually take the shot myself. I’m a pretty competitive person. I enjoy the pressure almost.”

Stack spends the offseason lifting weights, running and riding her bike. Horse, though, hasn’t been asked to join her when’s he runs.

“He’s too big. He’d probably pull me down,” she said.

Nothing’s been able to pull Stack down yet. In fact, her career continues to flourish.

“It would be a great honor to know that people respect me as a player and think highly of me as a person,” Stack said when asked about the prospects of being named a Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award finalist. “When we went to the Frozen Four, we went to the Patty Kaz banquet when Julie Chu won it. I still remember her speech. I never thought I’d be able to get on that kind of level, but anything’s possible.”

With that in mind, Stack has intentions of securing a spot on the 2010 Olympic team.

“That’s my No. 1 goal in hockey,” said Stack, a member of the 2007-08 national team. “I know the feeling of winning gold from the World Championships, and it would be an honor to play for the U.S. again.”

Until then, she’ll continue to use the outlets that hockey has provided to her. One of those is to make days brighter for kids who don’t have the chance to play sports.

“We go as a team to the Massachusetts Hospital school, where kids who live in the hospital go to take classes,” Stack said. “We’ll play Wii or PlayStation 3 with them. The kids like baseball and bowling, and Madden NFL for PlayStation 3. I do like playing video games, but I usually get beat.”

The kids, however, can cherish the thought of topping a world-class hockey player.

Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.