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Pietie Coetzee of South Africa.

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The achievements of South Africa women’s hockey team striker Pietie Coetzee are the stuff of legend.

She has scored more Test match goals – 231 in 234 appearances – than any player in the history of the women’s game and will be spearheading the SA forwards in their quest to win gold at the Olympics qualifying tournament in New Delhi, India, from February 18-26.

Nothing less than winning the final in the Indian capital will be good enough for the SA team in their quest to book a ticket to the 2012 London Olympics.

Coetzee was picked to play for her country as a 16-year-old while at Oranje Meisieskool in Bloemfontein.

A gifted sharpshooter, she scored a phenomenal first-half hat-trick against the US at the Champions Challenge tournament in Dublin, Ireland, last June to break the world record of Test match goals that had stood for two decades.

The goals were scored via a shot from field play, a penalty stroke and a penalty corner – a feat that encapsulates her value to a team and underscores her threat to the opposition the world over.

Yet Coetzee, deceptively laid back but possessing a keen mind, fell out of love with the game in 2006.

She needed something else, something more “intellectually stimulating” – and found it in emergency medical care.

Studying a four-year degree full-time at the University of Johannesburg, where she has played and coached, Coetzee is on the cusp of graduating.

The nature of the work, its surprises and rewards in helping people who have suffered trauma, had given Coetzee a complete break from the hockey field.

Now 33, and after returning to the national team in 2010, Coetzee is probably a better hockey player than ever before.

Watching the SA women’s hockey team these days, there is no doubt her presence in the side upsets opposing coaches, who often spend too much time trying to devise ways to stop her and forget about the threat posed by her fellow forwards.

Coetzee walks her own path, loves animals and has looked for a deeper meaning by exploring religion.

Never swayed by chasing records, it has always been about the team, the style of hockey and the positive vibe that surrounds a successful squad.

The fact that Coetzee has as close to a one-for-one ratio of Test caps to goals over a period of 16 years – with a five-year break in between – is surely an achievement that is without peer in the world of team sports.

She had scored 191 goals in 193 Test matches when she retired in 2006.

Since her return at the 2010 World Cup in Argentina, Coetzee has scored at the same rate, despite the sport having changed so radically in terms of style, tactics and the physical demands it requires of its players.

Coetzee recorded her 200th goal in her 200th Test match in Delhi.

A goal or two in the February 25 final in Delhi to win gold would most definitely make her tournament. – Saturday Star