Nashua’s Robbins hits her stride for Sacred Heart hockey team

Athletes who move up from high school to college often say the speed of the game is the biggest adjustment. It wasn’t necessarily that way for Nashua’s Melissa Robbins, a sophomore forward on the Sacred Heart University women’s ice hockey team. Because for most of her life Robbins played on boys teams, including four years of high school hockey at Nashua High School North. The speed of the game was hardly Robbins’ biggest challenge last year. She was attempting to come back, perhaps too soon, from knee surgery. But perhaps the toughest transition was balancing a demanding academic schedule as a nursing major while playing a varsity sport. Robbins says she’s a lot more comfortable this winter, and she’s proving it. Her hat trick Saturday against Wesleyan – the first of her college career – gave her nine goals in 16 games, just one short of her season total a year ago. “I think she’s just coming into her own,” Sacred Heart head coach Thomas O’Malley said. “We knew she was a player when she got her, but we didn’t know she become one of the faces of our program. “She’s on our top line, our power play, she kills penalty and she has jets, she can really skate.” She was second on the team in scoring last year.