Sara Durst stepped in at the right time.

After the resignation of coach Rick Capener, declining enrollment numbers, and the absence of a school to be sanctioned with, the fate of the Badger Lightning girls hockey program was up in the air this past summer. But thanks to a combination of a different school backing the program and Durst volunteering to become head coach, the Lightning are back in business.

“Unfortunately the season ended kind of in a rough patch last year,” Durst said. “Baraboo is not actually the school that’s backing the program any longer, so throughout the summer it was completely up in the air whether or not we would even have a team. Thankfully Mauston who is a part of the co-op was able to back the team.”

Durst, a Reedsburg native who joined the team last year as an assistant coach, has history with the program as she played on the team back in 2006 when it became a high school team for the first time. After the resignation of Capener, who was the head coach for the past two years, Durst knew finding a new head coach would be difficult and with close ties with the program, she was happy to step in.