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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Lee Stecklein maxes the meaning of the word 'champion'

Lee Stecklein has stood in awe on a field flanked by a seating bowl hovering around a 50,000-spectator capacity. Far from the proverbial fish out of water, she savored the occasion in the company of fellow elite pucksters and members of other communities deviating the daily norm and enjoying one another’s company.

And she did it while absorbing an event whose brevity in duration masks the lengthy, painstaking toil that goes into perfecting its presentation.

The venue: What is Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi?

The occasion: What were the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2014 Winter Games?

Were he furnishing the clue, Alex Trebek would have to technically accept those as correct responses. But the fresher, more frequent two-part answer is the HopeDay Festival at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Sure, that gap year between her freshman and sophomore campaign at the University of Minnesota let Stecklein absorb a few tear-jerking beauties overseas. The active effort to animate the concept of global harmony around an assortment of athletic affairs was anything but old to the youngest member of the 2014 U.S. women’s team.

But barely 18 months later, her return to reality yielded its own fields of fulfillment. Her HopeDay experiences have let her witness local pediatric hospital patients in their own escape from everyday life.

“There was kind of a dance party at my team’s station,” Stecklein recalled in a phone interview with Pucks and Recreation. “So we kind of joined the dance party, and to see all of the kids kind of ignore their troubles and dance away, it made a few of my teammates cry just watching it.”

The spontaneous rave reached a new level when Stecklein and company watched as a wheelchair user “just took over the dance floor.”

In that display, Stecklein saw a grateful beneficiary accepting a spotlight she had devoted the better part of her summer to illuminating.

The Gophers senior blueliner admits she entered college with little community service to speak of. She had a foundation for working with children, chiefly by way of hockey instructional clinics.

Those experiences, along with visiting children’s hospitals, made her service segue way. Beyond that, outreach beyond the rink remained largely uncharted territory.

Still, by the time she was crossing into the university’s upperclassmen range, she was raring to set a tone in the athletic department’s signature philanthropy program.

The result: HopeDay’s first installment to take place entirely at the campus football venue, with Stecklein as one of the select student-athletes spearheading the operation. Opposite tennis player Tereza Brichacova and rower Vanessa Johnston, she had interned with the university athletic department’s MAGIC (Maroon and Gold Impacting the Community) program the preceding summer.

Each autumn since 2006, MAGIC has conducted the annual HopeDay carnival for Twin Cities-area children facing cancer and other adverse health problems. Its 10th installment — conducted on Sept. 14, 2015 — cracked a new plateau by hosting more than 1,000 visitors and by setting up all of its stations at the stadium.

For Stecklein, size tells all in both that breakthrough edition and its follow-up earlier this academic year.

“To have it at TCF Bank Stadium for the first time allowed it to be the biggest event ever,” she said, “and I’m glad it’s going to be there from now on.” 

‘…feel like a very normal person’

The way Merriam-Webster prioritizes its definitions of “champion” make a ladder of Stecklein’s growth from sheer sports celebrity to community collaborator. At No. 4 out of four, the dictionary offers, “a winner of first prize or first place in competition” and “one who shows marked superiority.”

The South St. Paul native caught Gopher bench boss Brad Frost’s attention by fitting those descriptions well enough. She keyed Roseville Area High School to a state playoff crown in 2010, then a close bid for another title in 2012. In between, her emergence as a two-way connoisseur earned her a host of USA Hockey action within her age group at the time.

Crossing the Mississippi River and entering the state’s signature campus elicited — albeit in the most metaphorical terms — what Merriam-Webster may dub Stecklein’s inner “one that does battle for another’s rights” (ranked third on the definition scroll) and “militant advocate or defender” (second).

“I think just being a D-I athlete, you get exposed to a lot of great causes,” she mused.

Stecklein’s college trophy case and list of favorite charitable causes mismatch with her unsatisfied, unassuming demeanor. She has won an NCAA title in each of her first three seasons with the Gophers, then cherried each of those runs by helping Team USA to gold at the IIHF World Championship.

If Minnesota three-peats as the national champions this March, Stecklein will be the first U.S. college hockey player of either gender to garner four rings. Per her public LinkedIn profile, she already has a quartet of philanthropic interests in animal welfare, children, the environment and human rights.

The latter is a testament to her all-around evolution since coming to Frost’s capstone class with intent to build on a winning tradition. Through the MAGIC initiative, she found another guru to emulate in student-athlete development director Anissa Lightner.

Lightner is a 17-year veteran of the university, specializing in preparing all Gophers for life beyond sports and overseeing every community service endeavor. Stecklein proclaims her “one of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet.”

In an August 2010 YouTube spot, Lightner underscored her personal principle of exemplary leadership, stating, “I try to give back in my own personal life through volunteering and different opportunities, and sometimes I’ll see our athletes and they’re, like, ‘What are you doing out here?’ And I’m, like, ‘It’s really hard for me to encourage you to give back if I’m not giving back myself.’”

Stecklein saw that paradigm up close on a daily basis through her internship in the summer of 2015. The definition of that year’s internship corresponded with the ambition and grind that went into mutating HopeDay as everyone knew it.

For the interns, it instilled the same sort of realization a latter-day George Plimpton might reach upon joining a full-fledged workout with Stecklein’s skating sorority. But Stecklein proved to be no mere for-a-day Plimptonian in MAGIC. A craving for self-rewarding virtue took sway and refreshed itself each time she looked at Lightner after a full work day.

“It’s amazing that she has the energy to still have a smile on her face,” Stecklein observed. “It really opened my eyes to that. You feel like a very normal person.”

New goals, new places

Delving into her final semester at Minnesota, Stecklein is staring at an unprecedented long-term venture outside of the Twin Cities. The NWHL’s Buffalo Beauts made her their top draft choice last spring, and she is a viable candidate for the 2017-18 national team leading up to next February’s Olympics.

Save for the 2013-14 tour in preparation for Sochi, she has only experienced fleeting glimpses of other localities for hockey. But as part of her studies in the university’s Carlson School, where she is majoring in entrepreneurial management, she selected Australia for her required journey abroad.

After hanging up her second variety pack of an NCAA trophy and IIHF gold medal, she joined two teammates on a two-week, strictly academic excursion in May 2015.

“Just to see another country that way and thinking about getting involved abroad with a cause is something I would definitely consider in the future,” she said.

Her travel bag has also accrued stickers from Canada, the Czech Republic, Sweden and, most recently, Finland. All of those were the sites of short-term tournaments, including America’s victory at this past November’s Four Nations Cup.

But not unlike the glowering gold-medal Olympic omission, Stecklein’s itch to size up her outside interests in other nations remains unattended.

“It’s hard,” she conceded. “When we are traveling, we see a very small part of each country; not a lot of time for sightseeing. I would like to go to those countries to get a broader perspective.”

Barring an unexpected twist, Stecklein has a passport to Pyeongchang in the works for February 2018. That would add South Korea to her list of first-hand glimpses at other countries while delaying her arrival in Buffalo by a year.

“I’m not quite sure where I’ll end up or what I’ll end up doing,” she said. “But wherever I am, my time at ‘the U’ has made me realize how important it is to get involved in my community.”

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