Forest Lake’s Taylor Thompson has had an excellent four-year career on varsity for the Rangers.

The 18-year-old netminder went out on a high note in her final season of high school hockey by posting a .937 save percentage, a 1.58 goals-against average, and seven shutouts for her team which went 14-12-1 overall. The Rangers made it to the Class 7AA semifinal match before eventually losing to Grand Rapids-Greenway in what would be Thompson’s final varsity game.

“I think [the season] went really well up until the end because we didn’t get the ending that we wanted, but it really was everything I could have asked for in a season. I had some not great games but I felt really connected with my team and it was fun to be able to share the net with my goalie partner and be able to see her succeed a lot (Senior Kiera Peek, who is committed to play Division III at Wisconsin-Superior),” said Thompson about her senior year. “We had some good scores this year and it was a fun season.” 

Along with some top-notch statistics in the crease, the senior said that one of her favorite memories of the year came in Forest Lake’s 1-0 upset win over Andover this past November. Thompson had a 32-save shutout and her best friend Abigail Sklavenitis had the game-winner in overtime. Although the Rangers might not have ended the season in the way that they wanted, there was plenty of success and solid results for all in 2025-26.

For Thompson specifically, this was arguably her best season in net so far. The 5-foot-5 goaltender originally joined the varsity roster as a freshman at Forest Lake in 2022-23 and was immediately thrown into the fire during her first season by earning the start in the first few games of the year before eventually splitting time 50/50 with senior Adria Haley. She then moved into the sole starter position as a sophomore and stuck with it up until her senior season.

“It was hard. The first couple of games [as a freshman'], they gave them all to me because the senior goalie was dealing with a lot over the summer and she didn’t get to skate a lot so they kind of threw me into the first four games and it was pretty stressful actually. The first game we played Stillwater and that was when they had Josie St. Martin on that team (who is now playing Division I hockey at Minnesota Duluth) and I got lit up, but after that it was like, it can’t really get any worse,” she said jokingly about her first few games on varsity. As just a 15-year-old, Thompson had a tough first four games to play as a freshman, losing contests to Stillwater, East Ridge, Centennial/Spring Lake Park and Roseville/Mahtomedi, before then earning her first official varsity win and her first varsity shutout against Northern Tier in her fifth high school game ever.

It wasn’t easy at first, but she found her footing and got better and better from then on. Haley and Thompson eventually split time in net during the second half of the 2022-23 season. Overall, 15-year-old Thompson was able to post a .910 save percentage and a 2.97 goals-against average - very solid numbers for a freshman who had to jump into incredibly tough games from the get-go.

MORE FROM APX NEWS: