MARGIE SAHLSTROM

CLASS OF 1992

When a freshman gets plucked out of the lineup to play on the varsity basketball team, it’s a big deal. But by the time Margie was a freshman that was old hat – she had already played seven varsity games as an eighth grader! Not to say that her freshman year at Nanuet was anticlimactic. As a ninth grader, Margie began her four-year run as a starter on the varsity team. And what a run it was: She made a clean sweep of All-League, All-Rockland County and All-Section 1 accolades each of the four years. In her junior year, Margie was named fourth team All-State in Class C, and she capped her brilliant career by garnering first team All-State laurels her senior year.

Sophomore year brought Margie her first team MVP award—an honor she would receive in her junior and senior years as well. During her sophomore year, Margie attained her career high of 20.2 points per game. She averaged 13.8 as a freshman, 17.7 as a junior, and 16.8 as a senior.

By the time Margie graduated from Nanuet, she was one of the top five scorers in Rockland County girls’ basketball history, and still ranks eighth on the all-time list with 1,514 career points. She also tops Nanuet’s charts in single-season assists (150) and single-game steals (13). Margie was named the Rockland County Small School Player of the Year and The Journal-News Player of the Year in 1992, her senior year. The 1991-92 team, of which Margie was the captain, finished the regular season undefeated and held the No.1 ranking in the state heading into the postseason playoffs.

Nanuet’s lone blemish that season was a loss in the Section 1 Class C championship game to Our Lady of Lourdes of Poughkeepsie, a perennial state power. Down by only two points at halftime, Nanuet started the third quarter brimming with confidence when the unthinkable happened. While going up for a layup, Margie went down with a serious knee injury – a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). For all intents and purposes, Nanuet’s hopes for a sectional title went down with it.

“That was devastating,” says Dave Powers, who was Margie’s coach in both basketball and soccer. “We lost our best player. Psychologically the team couldn’t recover from that.”

After graduating from Nanuet, and following months of rehab for reconstructive knee surgery, Margie went on to play four years at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, where she was a 1,000-point scorer.

Margie attributes her prowess on the court to playing with her older brothers in front of their house growing up. “My brothers and their friends never gave me any mercy,” she says. “I’d say they gave me my toughness – if I really have any – and I learned how to really play.”

Basketball was a sport in which Margie made headlines, but she also enjoyed an outstanding soccer career at Nanuet, with a pattern similar to her basketball achievements: playing varsity as an eighth grader, starting on the varsity team all four years and serving as team captain her senior year.

Margie played on Golden Knight teams that advanced to the Section 1 Class C championship game four straight years, including the 1988 team that made it to the New York State quarterfinals, where they lost in a shootout to Highland.

Margie became only the second player in Nanuet girls’ soccer history to score more than 100 points in her career. Ironically, she tied with her older sister, Susan (a star in her own right), with 74 career goals, which at that time was a Rockland County record. She was named team MVP both her junior and senior years; All-Conference B for four years; and All-County and All-Section for three years. As a senior, Margie was named fourth team All-State. Additionally, she had three career hat tricks.

“I never knew any of my stats playing over four years, I just played,” Margie says. “When I scored my 74^th goal to tie Susan, I didn’t even know until after the fact. People thought I was aiming for it.”

With all these accomplishments, Margie was honored in 1992 with the Jerry Leo Award and the Black & Gold Scholarship.

“Margie always was a very classy player,” Powers says. “She’s definitely one of the top five players I ever coached, in both sports, at Nanuet.”

Today, Margie continues to stay active in a variety of activities. She has worked in sales for the last eight years, including the past six with Thomson PDR in Montvale, N.J. She resides in Congers with her husband, Kevin, and their two children, Katie, 4, and Kevin, 2.