When the stakes are at their highest, there isn’t anything Sara Hohenberger can’t handle. Her stomach, however, is a different story.

As a freshman three years ago for the UMass-Lowell field hockey team, she scored the game-winner in the Northeast-10 tournament title game, the first of four conference crowns she helped the River Hawks attain.

As a junior, she set a program record for points in a game with nine when she scored four times and assisted on another in a win over Southern Connecticut State University in the conference semifinals. That same year, she scored one of the River Hawks’ two goals in a Division II national semifinal win over rival Stonehill en route to Lowell’s first national title. And before each game, Hohenberger – a Windham native, Salem grad and current senior at Lowell – couldn’t stop herself from getting sick.

“So I think once I get that out,” she said with a laugh, “I calm down a little bit. Those are my nerves coming out. I feel like I have a stomachache before big games, and once I do that, it’s like, ‘Oh OK, now I’m ready to play.’”

She was more than ready. After leading the River Hawks back to the Division II Final Four this season, where they fell to rival Bentley, Hohenberger completed perhaps the greatest career in the Lowell field hockey history.

She finished as the program’s all-time leading scorer in points with 158 and goals with 64. Her 30 assists tie her for second alltime, and her 25 goals and 63 points as a junior are programbest season totals. She’s also a two-time NFHCA All-American, two-time ECAC All-star team member and led the league in scoring this past season, though she lost out to Bentley’s Mary Rogers for conference Player of the Year honors.

With one of the most dangerous shots to come through the Lowell program, Hohenberger “probably accounted for 75 percent of our goals in those four years in the NE-10 tournament,” said Lowell coach Shannon Hlebichuk.

But this year, it took her a little while to get going. Lowell struggled to a 5-3 start, and Hohenberger was kept off the scoreboard in four of those games.

Feeling the self-applied pressure to carry the offense, Hohenberger met with Hlebichuk in a “heart-to-heart” talk where the coach, “told me straight up, ‘You suck. You’re really not playing the way you should,’” Hohenberger said.

Emerging with a renewed approach and the realization of her role as a senior leader, Hohenberger went to work, led Lowell to wins in 13 of their next 14 games and finished the season with 56 points.

“She didn’t stagnate, like I see some players in this league do,” Hlebichuk said. “She bought into it early on and just went from there, always trying to rise to the next level. And that’s what she did.”

As much as stats tell the story, her overall play illustrates how dominating Hohenberger could be. Against Bentley earlier in the regular season, Lauren Jones – a Lowell senior and Hohenberger’s roommate – remembers Hohenberger moving with such purpose that defenders literally fell on their butts trying to keep up with her.

“They would get all frazzled because she’s so quick,” Jones said. “She would put the ball between their legs, and they would all run into each other.”

Hohenberger said her ascension into the game’s elite was totally unexpected, though her former coach at Salem, Jack Gatsas, disagrees. Describing her as “one of the best players I’ve ever coached,” Gatsas recalled the Class L state championship game Hohenberger’s senior year. Her pre-game routine caught up with her midway through the first half that night, forcing her to the sidelines. After getting sick, she shed the sweatshirt under her jersey, told Gatsas she was fine and returned to score a goal in a championship win over Timberlane.

“I remember her saying, ‘I’m not leaving this field until it’s over,’ Gatsas said. “That was the type of player she was.”