Sometimes the most important things in life we take for granted. Our health. Our happiness. Our families.

And, as in the case of women's hockey goalie Erin Villiote, sometimes even our athletes.

In her quest to play hockey, Villiote has been confronted with tremendous obstacles.

But odds and standards have never seemed to bother Villiote, who has proven over her four-year career to be one of Harvard's most reliable goalies ever.

Villiote's career almost came to a halt before it even had a chance to get started. She was looking to play hockey when she began school at Shrewsbury High in Shrewsbury, Mass.

But there was one small problem: the school had no women's hockey team. Instead of throwing her hockey dreams away, however, Villiote tried out for and made the boys' varsity team, the first girl to achieve such a feat in school history.

She did more than make the team, though. As a senior, she became the first girl in a school history to captain a boys' team, and was even the team MVP for the season. And she did all this while also playing soccer, track and softball.

While being a trailblazer of sorts may have held some appeal to Villiote, she prefers to look at her achievements from a purely athletic perspective.

Villiote is only 5' 2" tall, so, as she admits. "I would be at a disadvantage if I was not quick." And she credits most of her quickness as coming from the quality of play she faced in high school.

"Playing with guys was completely different [from playing with girls]," she says. "It's a lot faster game, played on a very high level. I didn't think--I just made the saves."

Villiote believes that her high school style has carried over into her play at Harvard.

"I'm a stay-at-home, stand-up goalie, and more of a reflex goalie," she says. "I don't play like Tripp [Tracy, men's goalie]--that makes me nervous."

Although Villiote admits that the transition to the women's game "was hard at first," she feels that her job was made much easier by the team's strength during her crucial freshman year.

"When I was a freshman, there were about seven seniors on the team," she explains. "I started, but we had good enough players in front that the goalie was not that important. By my sophomore year, we only had 10 players, and the goalie became more important."

All in all, the formula has brought about many positive results. Villiote has started the majority of games in goal for all of her four years, and holds a number of Crimson records. Among these are most shutouts in a season (six, achieved in her freshman year of (1991-92), most shutouts in a career (13), most saves in a game (52, in a 3-3 tie vs. Providence last February 19) and most saves in a season (613, 1992-93).