Shawn Gager, 36; turned obstacles into challenges

To say Shawn Gager was not afraid to put herself in harm's way is a bit of an understatement.

Hockey pucks routinely flew at her from the ice, and that was after she switched to the sport from playing goalie on field hockey and lacrosse teams. Race down a precipitous trail on a mountain bike? She was there. Run a marathon to raise money for cancer research? Sure. Scuba dive off Cape Ann? In a heartbeat.

"She was just extremely vivacious," said her father, John, of Manchester-by-the-Sea. "I have a picture of her at her first birthday in a high chair with a great big smile on her face. We put a cake in front of her to blow out the candles, and then she got the idea that it would be a good idea to dive into the cake. So she put her head down and dove in."

Ms. Gager died Friday in Massachusetts General Hospital, apparently of complications of treatment for multiple sclerosis, her father said. She was 36 and was an information technology consultant for DarwinSuzsoft in Wakefield, where she lived.

Fifteen years ago, Ms. Gager was named co-player of the year in hockey in the Eastern College Athletic Conference as a senior at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. In 19 games she had stopped 437 of 490 shots for an 89.2 save percentage. Such statistics, not to mention the ECAC award, were not exactly on the horizon when she first took to the ice as a freshman at Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield.

"Because I was playing the goalie position in field hockey and lacrosse, I was asked to come out for the team," Ms. Gager said in a 1992 Globe interview. "It didn't matter that I didn't know how to skate. There was no one else who could play the position."

"We put her on skates and had to push her toward the goal," her father recalled.

Coaches helped her suit up for the first couple of weeks, Ms. Gager said, adding, "I didn't know what went where."

She learned quickly. By the time Ms. Gager got to Colby, she was good enough to play varsity all four years.

"You're lucky as a person if you can discover a sport at which you have a natural talent," her father said. "Shawn had more than her share of talent, and hockey was really it."

Born in Providence, Ms. Gager was the younger of two daughters and grew up in Manchester-by-the-Sea. She went to the Brookwood School in her hometown, to Governor Dummer Academy, and to Colby, graduating in 1992.

She worked a few years and was returning to school to get a master's in business administration from Babson College when her mother, Kathleen (Carbine) Gager, died of breast cancer at 51 in 1995.

"That was a challenge," her father said. "She told her mother that she'd been accepted into graduate school. Her mother was very happy and passed away two days later. Certainly Shawn didn't lack for . . . for fortitude, let's say."

Two years later, Ms. Gager completed the Boston Marathon as a fund-raiser for cancer research. That same year, she graduated from Babson with an MBA. Ms. Gager had worked for Darwin Partners, which became DarwinSuzsoft after acquiring a Chinese information technology development company last year.

"She had a project that took her to Hawaii for eight months, commuting every other week," her father said. "While she was out there, she got into scuba diving and got all the certification up to the instructor level. She would dive there and off Grand Cayman Island, and would come back with pictures of all manner of creatures."

Meanwhile, she continued to play ice hockey, often as the only woman on a men's amateur team. It was because of hockey that she learned she had multiple sclerosis, when she underwent tests after telling a doctor during a physical that she was experiencing difficulties with her balance on the ice.

After the diagnosis, she began raising money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society by running the Falmouth Road Race. And she got engaged to Sean Carnathan of Wakefield, her father said.

"She had dated, but never found the right guy, and then she found him," her father said. "I had never seen her so happy. It couldn't get better. And all of a sudden this happened."

Less than two weeks before she died, Ms. Gager finished first in an annual Labor Day mile swim to and from Kettle Island, off the coast of Gloucester. Racing in the Atlantic's chilly waters wasn't exactly a stretch for a woman who had skied Tuckerman's Ravine in the White Mountains and raced bicycles through Vermont's mountains.

Still, hockey was her passion. Ms. Gager coached hockey and other sports at Buckingham, Browne & Nichols in Cambridge, at Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, and a team made up of players from Brookwood School and Shore Country Day in Beverly, her father said.

"I think her legacy might be helping athletes understand what's important in life and keeping it in perspective," her father said.

"Hockey has meant everything to me," Ms. Gager said in 1992. "It's taken me to heights that I never thought I would be able to reach. The biggest thing it provided me was the ability to work with other people."

In addition to her father and fiancé, Ms. Gager leaves her stepmother, Linda Mumford Gager, and a sister, Kimberly Daly of Andover.

A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. today in Sacred Heart Church in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Burial will be in Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Manchester-by-the-Sea.