Michaela Hesová Impresses at IIHF Women’s World Championship

By: Rebecca Osowski

First-year goaltender Michaela Hesová had a standout rookie season with the Big Green. A unanimous ECAC Hockey All-Rookie team selection, being named to the Ivy League’s second team, and being named an ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year finalist, naming her one of the top three first years of 73 in the league.
 
On top of those recognitions, Hesová broke the program record for saves in a season, making 848 total saves, the only first-year to be in the top ten. Her .922 save percentage also puts her in the top ten, sitting eighth overall.
 
Hesová, a native of Prague, Czech Republic, has been representing her country since she was 16. This past month, she reached the highest level, playing for Team Czechia in the 2025 IIHF Women’s World Championship, held nowhere else but her home country.
 
“Representing my country on whichever level at whichever tournament is always the biggest honor one can achieve in hockey,” Hesová said. “Especially this year, with the world championships being back home, I was incredibly grateful and incredibly thankful for the opportunity.”
 
Team Czechia’s second game of the tournament was against the United States, a game that Hesová got the nod for.
 
“I was told about the fact I was going to start 24 hours in advance which I’m very grateful for because I had the day before to have the time to freak out about it,” Hesovaá said. “The next day I just went about business as usual. I was very excited because all of our games were sold out. There’s 6,000 people, there’s countless kinds watching me, so I was very excited.”
 
Despite Czechia falling to the World Champions, Hesová did not crack under pressure. She made 44 saves, posting a .916 save percentage, a performance that earned her Player of the Game honors.
 
Hesová also appeared in Czechia’s game against Canada, making eight saves in just under one period of play.
 
With both Dartmouth’s season and the World Championship concluded, Hesová says the support of her family, coaches, and teammates both on the national team and in Hanover gave her all the confidence she needed.
 
“I knew that I had a lot of people behind me, and I knew no matter how that game would have gone, I would still have people who would love me and that would be super proud of me,” Hesová said.
 
She also credited her success on the international stage to her preparation at Dartmouth, both on and off the ice.
 
“I had just about anything and everything I could have needed or wanted. I was doing cognitive training; I was doing mental performance training; I was doing video with the coaches every other week; I had goalie sessions whenever I wanted,” Hesová said. “On top of that, I got a lot of opportunities to play in a lot of games that were sometimes very shot heavy. I wasn’t intimidated by the amount of shots I was about to get [against the United States].”
 
Now back on campus, Hesová and the rest of the Big Green will shift their focus to the 2025-26 season, continuing to build on the process implemented in the first season under Head Coach Maura Crowell.
 
“I think the main goals for the upcoming seasons as a team are to be better, to get better every single day and to be the hardest team to play against, as we were this year,” Hesová said. “We need to keep on growing the culture that we’ve been growing and be the most competitive team out there.”