Cover photo: www.mygophersports.com

By Joe Perovich/Murphy News Service

The University of Minnesota women’s hockey team reaching the NCAA Women’s Frozen Four and hoisting the trophy – as they did in their 4-1 title-clinching win over Harvard in March – is a rapidly manifesting cliché at this point.

That’s not to disrespect the amount of work and effort that had to preface the consistency of championship berths – it was actually intended to highlight it.

Minnesota recruits better. Minnesota trains better. Minnesota plays better.

That’s the price of becoming a cliché – bringing several individuals together in one place who drew an exceptional work ethic from their own, personal distinct personalities – the reflection of each individual’s unique and distinct upbringing.

Everybody has a friend, family member, colleague or classmate who is a ‘natural’ at pretty much anything they are doing for the very first time.

They are prodded for answers, and interrogated:  ‘“How are you good at everything?’’

To contextualize, departing Gophers forward Meghan Lorence is a clichéd example of this – and it’s because her story is anything but  a cliché.

Her role model: Who she looked up to is who she became

The 22-year-old Lorence had the fortune of living under the same roof as the person she looked up to – her sister, Amie.

What Amie meant to her as a sister made her that much better as a mentor.

“The big thing I take from her is always working hard and giving back,” Lorence said. “Doing anything you can to make yourself better, and the other people around you better.”

Amie was a defenseman for the Bethel Royals women’s hockey team of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MEAC) from 2004-05 through 2006-07. She was a two-time All-Conference honorable mention in 2004-05 and 2005-06 – and also – left-handed like her kid sister, Meghan.

“[Meghan’s] a huge family person,” a neighboring friend of Meghan’s, Nella Pitzen of New Brighton, Minnesota, said. “We grew up a street over from each other … and her siblings are both older and helped her a lot with hockey.”

During her senior season, Meghan’s sister helped her on the Gophers road trips.

“She traveled everywhere … the farthest [Amie and my family] have traveled to see us play was North Dakota and Madison, (Wisconsin).”

Lorence has had the backing and support of her family in her athletic endeavors, but at school and at home as well.

And for a long time, those two intertwined.

One of nearly 1.8 million

It takes 18 years to ‘learn it all,’ as we all might have foolishly believed at one point.

Transitioning from high school to college is a humbling experience. Living on your own really means you – and a lot of people like you – will become friends, combine your resources (Easy Mac and that-one-guy’s-1998-Saturn), and find your first classes like that time Christopher Columbus found “Asia.”

For Lorence, it meant that – but also being around students for the first time.

In the spring of 2011, Lorence was one of 1.77 million students who were homeschooled in the United States.

“It’s definitely different,” Lorence said on her college transition compared to that of her peers. “Simply going to class was the biggest thing, because I was just at home doing my schoolwork when others went to class [for their schoolwork].”

The estimated percentage of the school-age population that is home-schooled steadily increases each year. Just during Lorence’s four years of high school education from home, the number of kids who were educated from home increased from 1.5 million to 1.77 million — more than 10 percent.

Minnesota women’s hockey head coach Brad Frost said his efforts to recruit Lorence out of Irondale High School to the Gophers centered on the transition she’d be making from home to large campus such as the U.

“We certainly were trying to get her to understand it’s a bigger campus, it’s a lot of people, but at the same time we have the opportunity to ‘shrink it down’ for our athletes,” Frost said. “We knew that she was going to feel pretty comfortable here.”

And Lorence’s coaches and teammates capitalized on that opportunity. On one of the largest campuses in the United States she was comfortable.

“I think being a part of a team here makes the campus a lot smaller just because you know a lot of people, and I knew a lot of girls on the team coming in,” Lorence said. “I think that makes it easier and shrinks the whole campus down.”

The student-student-athlete

Lorence, who graduates this semester, was the Gophers assistant captain and had more than 150 career games logged collegiately, but she still fit in the necessary time to achieve not only one undergrad degree – but two.

She was a double major, studying human resource and development and business and marketing, with a minor in communications.

Integral to the Gophers “shrinking down” the campus and Lorence’s transition were all of the different resources they were able to offer her.

“We have academic counselors and tutors just in our athletic department, and everything else you can imagine, to get help,” Lorence said. “It’s about making it ‘easy’ to worry about hockey, because you’ve already managed your time wisely and gotten all of your studies done first.”

Key to a person being productive on the ice is feeling content with everything else going on in their life.

Lorence – for one – found the perfect equilibrium between both of her academic and athletic pursuits, Frost says.

“If you would ask her, I think (she would say) it was a struggle early on. She’s really grown and matured as a student-athlete,” he said. “I think that’s one of the great things about Meghan – several others and myself have seen her grow more comfortable with the academic side, and now to be a double major and beginning preparations to graduate from the University of Minnesota?

“That speaks volumes about her as a person,” Frost concluded. “and how she’s been able to navigate life and figure it out.”

Reporter Joe Perovich is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.