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POWER rowing up in Blaine, Taylor Turnquist aspired to be a high school and college hockey player. She never even considered she'd one day get to play professionally for her hometown W hitecaps because they didn't exist. W hen Turnquist was too young to have her driver's license, she would throw her hockey bag over her shoulder and bike six miles round-trip to the Super Rink to work out and skate. "The biggest thing for young girls is just developing individually," Turnquist said. "You have to be willing to put in the extra time, the extra effort, to build yourself as an individual player. And then as you start to be a part of teams and better and better teams, you have that indi- vidual skill set and those specific assets as a player that you can bring to a team and make a team better. "So once you build yourself as an individual player, every thing else comes with it." Turnquist would go on to become a three-sport star for Spring Lake Park High School. She played soccer and lacrosse, but hockey was her love. Her twin broth- er, Luke, played for the boys' team, as did brother, Nick, who is 18 months older. Most notable, as good as she was, she decided not to transfer to a private school even though Spring Lake Park was a small school not successful enough yet to thrust her into the limelight of playing in the state tournament or something like that. "I really had that drive to make it to Division I, and there was a lot of pressure and thought about trans- ferring to a bigger program to get noticed," Turnquist said. "But ultimately, I just decided that if I'm good enough, if I have these skill sets that Division I col- lege coaches like, they 'll find me and if I perform well enough and I'm on the stat sheet, I really thought, 'They 'll seek me out.'" They did. P R E S E N T E D B Y 29 M A R C H 2 0 2 2 | M H J ON L I N E . C O M G Photo / Minnesota Whitecaps Spring Lake Park's Taylor Turnquist has hardware, heart and a relentless work ethic