She’s a keeper

By Joe Mason
Times Sports Editor

Lauren Voran wasn’t worried about fitting in.
She was more concerned about being the best.
Voran, a senior at Neumann College in Ashton, Pa., was always an athlete. The 2002 graduate of St. Hubert High School was a midfielder on the Bambies’ soccer team during the fall season of her freshman and sophomore years.
And though she was a fine soccer player, that wasn’t her passion.
Her passion was much cooler.
Voran wanted to be like her older brother Rick, so when she was 8 years old, she started playing street hockey.
"I was the only girl . . . there may have been two girls," Voran recalled. "It was only street hockey, but I loved it. I wanted to be a goalie, so that gave me a chance to play."
Street hockey served its purpose, but when she reached the age of 14, Voran decided it was time to strap on the ice skates.
And after minding the net for the Father Judge Club Ice Hockey team during her sophomore year at St. Hubert, Voran signed up to play for the Princeton Tigerlillies, a female ice hockey team that played its games in Hamilton, N.J.
Her stellar play motivated her to play college hockey, and when she was looking for a school, she found the perfect place.
"Neumann was perfect because my senior year in high school was the first year they had a women’s hockey team," Voran said of the college. "And I wanted a school close, and one that had my major (sports management)."
The school is roughly a 50-minute ride from her Mayfair home, so Voran’s parents, Richard and Kelly, are able to visit and watch her go to work as the team’s starting goaltender.
Voran has been rather stingy in the nets.
This year, her final season as the Knights’ goalie, she carries a 2.08 goals-against average and a .933 save percentage, meaning she turns away more than 93 percent of opponents’ shots that she faces.
That stat could be the most telling, if you consider that the save-percentage leader in the National Hockey League, goalie Manny Fernandez of the Minnesota Wild, has a stat of .932.
"I’m proud of what I’m doing, what I’ve done here," said Voran, who was named in her sophomore year to the Eastern College Athletic Conference’s West Division 3 Academic All-America Team. "But I think my improvement has been because of my team’s improvement.
"A goalie is only as good as the players in front of her," she continued. "We’ve gotten so much better. My team, the girls here, the seniors, we’ve kind of helped build the program. The girls before us started it; we’re trying to build it, and the younger girls are also helping. We got a good thing going here."
The improvement has been easy to spot.
During her first three years on the team, the Knights clinched a playoff berth and faced Elmira College in the first round all three years.
The team has never advanced to the second round, and its first two playoff experiences ended in blowout losses. In 2003, the final score was 14-0; the next year, the Knights got thumped again, 14-1.
Voran tended the nets in those games. Last year, though the Knights still couldn’t beat their league rival, the 2-0 playoff loss meant the players were far less shell-shocked this time around as they left the ice.
"That shows how far we’ve come," the 5-foot-5 goalie said. "And there’s a lot of reasons for that.
"We put in a lot of hard work, we have great coaches, we do great recruiting and we do a good job promoting the school, and we work hard in practice."
This year, the Knights have a 6-6 record thus far, and 2-2 in the ECAC West Division.
But there’s still plenty of work ahead.
"The goal this year is to get to the second round, at least the second round," Voran explained. "We’re still getting better and better, but I want to leave here with a playoff win."
When her college playing days are over, Voran will still strap on the skates. She’s planning to sign on with a men’s hockey league.
She also wouldn’t mind being on the other side of the bench some day.
"I would love to coach girls hockey," said Voran, who is thinking about a career in teaching. "Maybe coach a prep school that offers the sport.
"I really love the sport, and I’d love to be around it forever," she added. "Next year I’ll probably be on a men’s team, but I would love to keep promoting the sport of women’s hockey. It’s great.
"It’s not like men’s hockey, there’s no hitting, so that kind of takes away from the game a little," she said. "But I’m a regular girl and I love the sport. I love playing hockey for Neumann College."
Voran loves making the big glove save. She lives to thwart a breakaway, or to move across the crease to prevent that ricocheting shot from finding the back of the net.
But she also likes hanging out and being one of the girls — one of the girl ice hockey players, that is.
"I love it here, we have a really close team," she said. "We travel around. We’ve been to Minnesota, Vermont, Pittsburgh, we go to upstate New York a lot, so we’re always around each other.
"It’s really a great environment," she added. "Every year I have twenty-six close friends. I stay in touch with the girls who graduate and I meet new friends, new teammates, every year.
"I now have friends from Canada, Massachusetts, from all over," she added. "Hockey has really been great for me." ••
Sports editor Joe Mason can be reached at 215-354-3035 or jmason@phillynews.com