The difference between an average player and a great player in any sport is attitude.

A good attitude reflects an athlete’s maturity. A good attitude makes someone “coachable.” A good attitude is the biggest difference in the game of Badger women’s hockey standout Lindsay Macy.

Macy, the sophomore forward from Ellendale, Minn., has already established herself as one of the best offensive players in the WCHA and is off to a torrid start this season. She is second in the WCHA in scoring with 13 points and is scoring 3.25 points per game.

She was recently named the WCHA Offensive Player of the Week after a weekend in which she tallied five assists to help her team sweep Bemidji State.

So who lit a fire under the Badger forward?

The most likely catalyst for Macy’s shift in attitude is the week she spent playing with the U.S. Under-22 National Team in August. She joined some of the best young female hockey players in the country, including Badgers Meghan Horras and Molly Engstrom, at the USA Hockey Women’s National Festival to host a three-game series against the Canadian Under-22 National Team.

“Just going out there and playing with the best people from the United States and realizing how much talent was out there really woke me up,” Macy said. “I realized that I needed to work that much harder to get where I want to be.”

Macy has drawn on that experience to inspire her to work on aspects of her game that needed some improvement.

“I’m working more on my conditioning now,” Macy said. “I realized I wasn’t in the best shape. Also, staying positive was another thing that I needed to work on. They pretty much showed me out there that I needed to stay positive at all times because sometimes I was so hard on myself and my teammates.”

Though she has shown tremendous improvement this season, Macy was certainly no slouch during her freshman campaign. She led the Badgers with 18 goals and was second with 31 points on the season. Macy was early regarded as having one of the quickest releases in the nation, and she had a natural scoring ability once she crossed the blue line.

“She has a great set of hands and has that knack for getting the puck in the net,” head coach Mark Johnson said. “She’s had that since a real young age, so she’s a good goal-scorer. She understands and has a feel for the game and where to go with the puck.”

Macy’s success could also be attributed to her line mates, sophomore Sara Bauer and junior Sharon Cole. Late last season, Johnson decided to switch up the lines and see what happened. He put Cole, Bauer and Macy together, and they took off. Something clicked with the three of them that has carried into this season.

“All three of them had good years last year, and they didn’t sit around all summer and read their newspaper clippings,” Johnson said. “Between the three of them, they’ve really worked hard to put themselves in this position and are seeing some of the fruits of their labor.”

Macy’s line has accounted for 14 of the team’s 31 goals this season. The line features two of the WCHA’s top scorers in Macy and Bauer, and they continue to make each other better.

“I couldn’t ask for a better two line mates,” Macy said. “They work hard all the time. We always have one person going hard all the time, no matter who it is, one of us is going hard to the puck. That puts pressure on the other team and that’s where we get our goal-scoring chances.

The next big step for Macy is to take the reigns and assert herself as a leader. She does everything she can to lead the team on the ice with her stellar play, but as one of the team’s better and more vocal players, she can provide leadership for the team when seniors Molly Engstrom, Jackie Friesen and Carla MacLeod graduate.

“She’s grown and she’s matured, and she just needs to continue to seek growth because as she does that, I think people will respect her more in a leadership capacity,” Johnson said.

For now, Macy is content to lead the team on the ice rather than off it. As she continues to put up big numbers, she will garner the respect she deserves from her teammates and from around the nation.