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She is a 50-game ‘veteran’ of the Wakatipu Wild women’s ice hockey team and she is still only 19.
A hard-working defender, Gracie Hellmrich brought up the half-century during the Wild’s eventful double-header in Dunedin two weekends ago, and says she was surprised to learn she had reached the milestone.
"I feel very lucky to be this experienced and being with the same team for the entire time is also pretty special."
In fact Hellmrich, who turns 20 next month, has played for the Wild since it was formed in 2020 when she was just 13.
Remarkably, she originally commuted for games and some practices from Fairlie, in South Canterbury — "they were very understanding about not making practices".
She had two years in the New Zealand under-18 team, captaining them to gold in their division in Bulgaria in 2024, then the last two years with the Ice Fernz, including a silver medal in Dunedin last year.
Now based in Wānaka, she says there have always been changes with the Wild, "but this year it’s quite significant with new coaches and a lot of girls moving on to other teams".
"So, yeah, we’ve got a lot of young or less experienced players in the team, but everyone’s putting in a lot of work to improve and develop more as a team."
They’ve only won one game to date, in that double-header against the Thunder in Dunedin, and last weekend lost the return games on home ice, 4-1 and 2-0.
"I feel [those] games were actually really close, I don’t think the score reflected them as much."
Regardless of how their other games pan out, Hellmrich feels "it’s been a great season just developing a new team".
Starting the sport at 7, and having grown up playing on an outdoor rink in Tekapo, she says "I just love it and the people that come with it and just the atmosphere of it, it’s so incredible".
"And the crowd we had last weekend was so cool, it just makes you want to play even harder and win for the people who are watching you."
