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SASKATOONEXPRESS - November 14-20, 2016 - Page 1
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Volume 14, Issue 44, Week of November 14, 2016
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
Home is where the heart is for Lauren Zary Lauren Zary (front) returned to Saskatoon to play for the Huskies after two years at Brown University in Rhode Island. This year she is the captain of the team. (Photo by Darren Steinke)
Darren Steinke Saskatoon Express e it ever so humble, Lauren Zary learned there is no place like home when it came to playing hockey. In 2012 as a high school grad from Centennial Collegiate, Zary moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to play for the Brown University Bears women’s hockey team in the Division I ranks of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Zary was recruited by the Bears after putting up 44 goals and 82 assists in 103 regular-season games with the Saskatoon Stars midget AAA program. She was an honour roll student on top of that. She soon found out life on the ice with the Bears wasn’t all it was cracked up to
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be. Zary put up two assists in 24 appearances in her first season as Brown posted a 6-20-1 overall record. Away from the game, Zary flourished as a student. During that rookie campaign, she was named to the all-academic team for the Eastern College Athletic Conference. In her sophomore season in 2013-14, Zary played in the Bears’ first two games before walking away from the squad. She finished the academic school year before returning home to Saskatoon. While she focused on her studies, the Bears proceeded to have another tough campaign, going 4-20-5 overall. “You go on recruiting tours there, and it is just a different atmosphere,” said Zary. “It is hard to describe. When you were there, it felt right at the time. I went
there and hockey didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I have no regrets.” Zary admits she was enticed by the aura of playing NCAA Division I hockey growing up in Saskatoon. When that opportunity presented itself, she had to take it. After joining the Bears, Zary found the whole atmosphere of the team to be constantly negative. Thanks to a repatriation rule that was passed for the Canadian university women’s hockey ranks, Zary was able to join her hometown University of Saskatchewan Huskies in the fall of 2014 without having to sit out a year. She was the first U of S player to take advantage of that rule. The Huskies had just come off of winning their first Canada West championship and their roster included a number of
Zary’s former teammates with the Stars. One of the first big differences she noticed with the Huskies was the coaching was better than it was with the Bears. She said the coaches at Providence weren’t focused on making the players better. Zary said she wanted guidance to keep developing her game. “Here you can go to a coach and say, ‘What can I be doing (better), or can you help me out with this?’ They are first ones to be giving you help or staying on the ice extra to help you out, just like work through the little things with you.” She also found the atmosphere with the Huskies to be so much more positive than it was with the Bears. The fact Zary also saw a lot of familiar faces also helped. (Continued on page 11)