Gretchen Jaeckel
Jersey Number: 11
Position: Defense
Home: Princeton Junction, NJHow I support my Hockey Habit: Event Planner
As a youngster, I was a “rink rat” watching my older and younger brothers play hockey. My other girl friends and I even started a cheerleading team for games, which I’m sure my brothers really enjoyed! There wasn’t much hockey for girls back then! I finally got the chance to lace up my own skates when I went to Hotchkiss, a prep school in Lakeville, CT. I am forever grateful to Kelly Stone, the coach at Hotchkiss, for teaching me everything I needed to know about hockey! I continued playing hockey when I went to Middlebury College in Vermont. I wish I could say that we were as good then as the current Middlebury team is. After college, my “hockey career” was non-existent until I started coaching for the “Tiger Lilies”, a girl’s team in Princeton, New Jersey. My most memorable moment with the Tiger Lilies was getting to coach the team at Madison Square Garden between periods of the Rangers game… I was 8 ˝ months pregnant and they made me sign a waiver before I could even walk across the ice to get to the bench! A few years later, I happened upon Jennie Cook, our founder, and the rest is history! We rule!