Completed Event: Women's Ice Hockey at RV Colgate on January 31, 2026 , Loss , 2, to, 3
Final
Women's Ice Hockey
at RV Colgate
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Star Tribune
6/10/2005 8:00:00 PM | Women's Ice Hockey
March 24, 2005
By Judd Zulgad
Star Tribune
There have been times in Mark Hudak's two seasons as coach of the Dartmouth women's hockey team that he has been tempted to lock the team's weight room and deny access to the rink.
He figures that might be the only way to slow Tiffany Hagge's 100 miles-per-hour pace.
"I'm worried she's going to burn out at times," Hudak said. "But it's what she is used to and what works for her."
And it is difficult to argue with the results. A Coon Rapids native, Hagge is a key reason Dartmouth will face the Gophers on Friday in the semifinals of the Frozen Four in Durham, N.H.
Hagge, the right winger on the Big Green's second line, has 27 goals and 21 assists to rank third on the team in scoring. Always a solid player, the junior became an offensive force in the second half of the season, accumulating 22 goals and 31 points in the past 19 games. She added the first four hat tricks of her career in that span.
If these are signs of burnout, every hockey player should be so lucky.
"I definitely don't feel burned out," said Hagge, a finalist for Minnesota's Miss Hockey in her senior year at Blaine High School. "I feel energized. I'm the type of person where I can't sit down. If we have a day off, I will go in and do a bike workout or get a lift in. I feel like when you're resting other people are working to improve."
Hudak isn't the only one who has noticed.
"Tiff works incredibly hard both on and off the ice," said senior Meagan Walton, who centers Hagge's line. "In practice she's a competitor and going against her in drills only makes you better."
Part of this work ethic is just Hagge's personality, as evidenced by the fact she has a double major in philosophy and psychology and carries a 3.2 grade-point average. But another part of is Hagge's desire to make up for lost time.
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While she always has loved sports, Hagge did not start playing hockey until the age of 12. Hagge admits she wasn't very good at first but, given her competitive nature, it didn't take long for that to change.
"I had never been on skates before, and I was thrown into an environment with girls that had played boys' hockey," she said. "So it was a really a challenge for me. I kind of pushed myself to keep up but I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I just thought it was great. It was like nothing else I had done before. So I fell in love with it."
Hagge played with two current Gophers, goalie Jody Horak and defender Krista Johnson, at Blaine. She also has spent recent summers training with Gophers center Krissy Wendell and the two have become good friends. They all could have been teammates at the university - the Gophers recruited Hagge - but she felt Dartmouth was a better fit.
"When I started looking at schools, the university was high on my list," Hagge said. "But there's a process of being recruited and going on the different visits and getting to kind of know the coaches. I just kind of realized the U of M wasn't a good fit for me. Dartmouth was really appealing because not only do they have a great hockey program, but they offered an excellent education."
Hagge hopes to earn a spot on the 2006 Olympic team, then return to Dartmouth to play her senior season.
"Making the Olympic team has been my goal for a number of years and that's kind of been the focus," she said. "That's what I think about when I'm in the weight room when I don't have to be. Making that team. It's something that is really important to me."
Judd Zulgad can be reached at jzulgad@startribune.com
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