Having lost an entire girls lacrosse season after seeing her Fairview team go 13-4 when she was a freshman in 2019, Thayer Hubbard wasn’t sure how the 2021 season would unfold.
A win against powerhouse Cherry Creek in the season opener in Greenwood Village, however, put Hubbard and the Knights in the right frame of mind for what turned out to be an excellent campaign. Fairview, the Boulder Valley School District team, finished 8-3 and, with a 6-0 league record, earned a first-round bye in the Class 5A postseason.
While the team had quite a few impactful seniors, Hubbard is part of a younger group of girls who look to carry the program back to the glory days of a few years ago, when the Centaurus Warriors — as the BVSD team was known at the time — were seemingly always in the mix for deep playoff runs.
“That (Cherry Creek) game I think carried the momentum for all of us to just be the best players we could be all season,” Hubbard said.
“During the COVID season (2020), during tryouts, we had a chip on our shoulder in that we had lost to Colorado Academy by a lot in the quarterfinals (in 2019). We were really ready to prove that it wasn’t just luck of the draw that we made the one quarterfinals appearance, that we were a strong program, and we didn’t get a chance to do that. So we went into this season wanting to do that… we wanted to prove we are a great program.”
As with many student-athletes, Hubbard is excited for the possibilities of having a full season in 2022. But she said that even with a shortened season, her and her teammates wanted to make up for lost time in 2021.
It started as soon as the games became official.
Against Cherry Creek, Hubbard looked the part of a goalie who was eager to not let anything get by her. She saved 11 of 17 shots (her .647 save percentage was her best full-game mark of the year) and it started a run for the junior where she helped win seven games of an 8-0 start to the season (freshman keeper Anne Booth also started one game).
The BoCoPreps.com player of the year and second-team all-state selection had another 10-save performance against Regis Jesuit which helped the Knights win the Class 5A East Division, and Hubbard went on to maintain a save percentage above .500 for the entire year while keeping the team in every game all the way to their playoff rematch against the Raiders.
“My teammates helped me better myself … and I was prepared very well in practice because our squad was so talented this year,” Hubbard said. “We brought girls off the bench that had just as much talent as our starters, and we got those reps in practice.”
