ALBANY, N.Y. — Women's hockey senior goaltender
Paula Voorheis was named the winner of the 2017 Sarah Devens Award, as announced by the ECAC Hockey conference office on Monday.
Presented annually to a player who "demonstrates leadership and commitment both on and off the ice," the Devens Award is a joint Given as a joint honor between ECAC Hockey and Hockey East. The award is named in honor of former Dartmouth Big Green ice hockey player, Sarah Devens, who died in 1995 prior to her senior year.
Voorheis is the second Big Red student-athlete to receive the Sarah Devens Award since its inception, as Dianna Bell was tabbed with the honor in 2002.
The Shanty Bay, Ont. native served as a Teaching Assistant at Cornell this year, assisting in a course that integrated physical engineering sciences with biological and social sciences for the design of sustainable systems. Voorheis has also been instrumental in the team's Cub Club program and facilitating the team's Do It For Daron initiative. She has also taken part in various research projects on campus, including one for the National Institution of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and worked on a service project called Bridges to Community at Cornell.
Voorheis was also named the 2017 ECAC Hockey Mandi Schwartz Student-Athlete of the Year. The award is the top award given out by ECAC Hockey, honoring former Yale standout player and student-athlete Mandi Schwartz, who lost her battle with cancer in 2011. The Biology and Society major is a three-time ECAC Hockey All-Academic Team member and has twice represented Cornell on the Commissioner's List as the program's top scholar. At one of the most competitive academic institutions in the country, she has earned a 3.83 grade point average, which includes multiple 4.00 GPA's or higher (the most recent of which occurrent in the Fall of 2016) and made her part of Cornell's 400 Club.
Voorheis enjoyed a stellar senior season between the pipes for the Big Red, recording the second-best single season save percentage in program history (.944), while registering a record of 10-8-3 with two shutouts. She posted career-bests in both save percentage and goal-against average (1.59) marks that ranked third and eighth in the nation, respectively. She stopped a career-high 51 shots in a 3-0 loss at Wisconsin. She became the second goaltender in Big Red history to reach the 2,000 career save mark on Jan. 21 against St. Lawrence and finished her career with 2,238, which is an NCAA-era record at Cornell.
