SPORTS
S
asha Hartje didn’t want her long, suc-
cessful competitive athletic career to
end with her on the sidelines with a
broken leg.
It won’t.
The Long Island University women’s hockey
player and former Emory University women’s
tennis player from Bloomfield
Hills will compete for the U.S.
women’s hockey team this month
at the World University Games in
Lake Placid, New York.
This is Hartje’s second hockey
season at Long Island, a private
school in Brooklyn.
The 5-foot-8 graduate student’s
first season at Long Island came to a sudden
and painful halt Nov. 23, 2021, when she broke
her leg in a game against Yale.
The timing of her injury couldn’t have been
worse. Her family was in the stands at Long
Island. Her sister Elle Hartje was playing for
Yale in the first time the sisters competed
against each other.
“I got knocked down, spun in a circle on my
knees, and my leg hit the boards. I fell perfectly
wrong” is how Sasha described her injury.
A “huge rod and eight or nine screws” were
inserted in her leg during surgery, Sasha said,
to repair the damage.
Physical and mental rehabilitation followed.
Sasha soldiered through her recovery.
“I’ve been known as an athlete all my life,
”
she said. “I knew this hockey season (2022-23)
was going to be my last season as a competitive
athlete, and I wasn’t going to let my career end
with a broken leg.
“Once I started skating again, I knew that
nothing I would do would make my leg worse.
But mentally, there was the worry about what
would happen the first time I fell into the
boards.
”
Sasha is back on defense for Long Island this
season and playing well.
Knowing that, she contacted Team USA
women’s hockey coach Brandon
Knight in early December after
learning from her sister Elle that
one of Elle’s former Yale women’s
hockey teammates was going
to play for Knight at the World
University Games, a competition
held every two years.
“I wondered if this was
something I could do, so I
called Coach Knight to find
out what was the deal,
” Sasha
said.
“Everything worked out per-
fectly. Coach Knight was looking for Division
I players like myself and I told him my team
(Long Island) is off the weekend of the (World
University Games) semifinals and medal
games. Now three other girls from my team
will be playing for Team USA.
“Lake Placid isn’t that far from Long Island.
My teammates and I will just hop in the car
and drive there. It should take about five
hours.
”
The Long Island quartet will miss one of
Team USA
’s five round-robin games against
Japan, Czechia, Great Britain, Slovakia and
Canada on Jan. 12-18 because of a schedule
conflict, but all four players will be available
for the World University Games semifinals
Jan. 20 and medal games Jan. 21 if Team USA
qualifies.
“I’m so excited,
” Sasha said. “I’ll be wearing
a Team USA sweater, representing my country,
in my last season of competitive sports.
”
Sasha was named the Jewish News Female
High School Athlete of the Year in 2017 at the
end of an outstanding sports career at Detroit
Country Day that included two tennis state
championships.
She enjoyed her four seasons playing tennis
at Emory.
But it wasn’t a smooth ride for her at the
private school near Atlanta, Georgia. She
had a plate and seven screws inserted into
her injured wrist in 2018,
saw the 2020 season canceled
because of the COVID-19 pandem-
ic, and she missed time on the court in
2021 because of COVID-19 quarantines and a
positive test for the virus.
On a positive note, she was one of three cap-
tains of Emory’s Division III national champi-
onship team in 2021, the same year she gradu-
ated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology.
After finishing her Emory tennis career,
Sasha was hungry to play competitive hockey
again, so she looked for a Division I collegiate
program that offered a master’s degree in busi-
ness administration.
Tod Hartje, Sasha’s father, was solidly
behind Sasha’s desire to play competitive
hockey again.
Tod won an NCAA championship with
Harvard University hockey team before he
became the first American to play hockey for
a team in the Soviet Union and played for the
NHL
’s Winnipeg Jets.
“I told Sasha she absolutely should play
hockey again if she wants to,
” Tod said. “I knew
she would be somebody every coach would
want playing defense. She’s very competitive,
she has a will to win, she knows how to defend,
and she’s great at making the first pass out of
your zone.
”
Sasha ended up at Long Island mainly
because then-women’s hockey coach Rob
Morgan knew her from when he was the Yale
women’s hockey coach, and he recruited her to
come there.
Even though Sasha has a third year of eligi-
bility at Long Island because of the pandemic
and switching sports, she’ll be done with hock-
ey there after this season because an MBA is a
two-year program.
Send sports news to stevestein502004@yahoo.com.
Sasha Hartje will compete for
Team USA in women’s hockey
at the World University Games.
Hockey is Her World
STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Sasha
Hartje
LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY
Sasha Hartje
takes a shot
for the Long
Island University
women’s hockey
team.
LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY
46 | JANUARY 5 • 2023