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Brigette Lacquette hasn’t set skate on Winter Olympic ice yet,  and she’s already scored.

Team Canada defenseman Brigette Lacquette (Photo/Dave Holland/Hockey Canada Images).

The 25-year-old defenseman from Mallard, Manitoba, achieved a dream last week when she became the first First Nations member to be selected to Canada’s Olympic women’s hockey team. She will compete at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, in February.

“It’s pretty special,” Lacquette told Sportsnet.ca. “Growing up, I really didn’t have that female role model to look to. It’s just very special for me to be that role model for young First Nations kids across Canada.”

And what a role model she has been. Lacquette, who is Cote First Nation, won silver medals with Canada’s national women’s team at the 2017 4 Nations Cup in Tampa, the 2017 Nations Cup in Germany and Austria, the 2016 International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s World Championship in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, and the 2015 IIHF Women’s World Championship in Malmo, Sweden.

Team Canada defenseman Brigette Lacquette in action at the 2016 Women’s 4 Nations Cup against Finland (Photo/Riku Laukkanen/Hockey Canada Images).

Lacquette was also a member of Canada’s gold medal-winning team at the 2010 IIHF Women’s Under-18 Championship in Chicago.

Last season, she was the second-leading scoring defenseman for the Calgary Inferno of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League with 4 goals and 10 assists in 19 games. She has a goal in eight games for the Inferno this season.

She played at the University of Minnesota-Duluth from 2011-12 to 2014-15 and tallied 20 goals and 49 assists in 106 games at the NCAA Division I school.

“I’ve worked my whole life towards this, and just being that role model for young First Nations is huge,” Lacquette told hockeycanada.ca in September. “I didn’t have that growing up, have that women’s hockey player to look up to that was Aboriginal, so being the first one, it means a lot.”

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