Tayor Heise a Rochester Perspective

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CommunityBased
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Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2013 1:13 am

Tayor Heise a Rochester Perspective

Post by CommunityBased » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:16 pm

This season Rochester Mayo has its best team in a long time and probably won’t be this good again for an even longer time. As good as this team has been it could have been a lot better. Mayo could/should have the state’s best goalie (UofM playing for Mayo boys), top defensemen (Shattuck/UMD), and Lourdes 2 leading scorers (who have accounted for over half Lourdes goals). All four of these players are Mayo kids and 3 of 4 had/have siblings who played for Mayo. Two of the girls played boys hockey through youth so never played with this group of Mayo girls. As Mayo heads into sections against 3 of top 10 finalist for goalie of the year and other D1 recruits I can’t help think how nice it must be to have your best kids stay and play with your home team.

So what does that have to do with the amazing Taylor Heise?

Having a daughter at a similar age as Taylor I have had the privilege of watching her for many years. I do mean privilege. She is so good and such a team player. The funny thing is my daughter didn’t get to play against Taylor but once at the youth level. Why? Because my daughter played on the Rochester Youth Co-op “A” teams while Taylor with all of her talent played for Red Wing girls at the “B” level. I am sure Taylor had countless offers to play for other youth teams, high school teams, and boys teams. But she didn’t. Did it hurt her to play “B” level girls youth hockey and “A” level girls HS hockey? Sure doesn’t seem like it.

So in these days of chasing the next best thing and focusing on what is best for me, we all have a couple more games to bear witness to a girl who said no to all that nonsense and became the best player in the state (country/world?) in her age group while staying put and playing girls hockey. So I encourage anyone who reads this to go out and see this special player as her senior season winds down. I doubt we will see her kind again. Personally I hope she has set the example that you can play at home, play girls hockey, and still reach your potential (and get noticed). Let’s be honest, you get noticed in the offseason.

Thank you Taylor (and family) for your great play and more importantly your class and loyalty. It truly has been a pleasure to watch you and we all look forward to seeing you play for the Gophers and USA.

p.s. – The Mayo girls who didn’t end up at Mayo are great kids. I still cheer for them. They and their families had difficult decisions to make and while I have a different opinion I understand and respect their choice. It’s not right and wrong. A lot goes into these decisions aside from just opportunity such as friends, coaches, education, etc… They did what they thought was right for their situation. However, I used the Mayo situation, which I think is more the norm today, to highlight how unique Ms. Hockey-Heise is in today’s world. If you don’t play for one of the big metro elite programs there is a lot of pressure to look elsewhere (boys/transfer/privates).

LZ94
Posts: 190
Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:20 pm

Post by LZ94 » Wed Feb 14, 2018 5:55 pm

Thanks for writing this down. I agree with you.

Too many jump into the race to nowhere and forget to have fun and play for the love and for their buddies.

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