‘Her journey with breast cancer isn’t going to define her,’ the Gretta Ehret Dream Crazy Foundation aims to create access, awareness and spread joy through sport
The late Gretta Ehert is pictured doing what she loved the most: motivating, coaching, and exchanging energy with youth. Photo: Submitted
When Emilee Ehret was in the third grade, she viewed her older sister as a larger than life superhero.
She adored her so much so that she wrote a letter about Gretta, who she credits with teaching her “everything.”
“She was almost like a motherly figure to me,” Emilee told Female Athlete News. “I did pick up a field hockey stick because of her. She did put it in my hand.”
Emilee, her sister Whitney, their family and their friends, and the Philadelphia field hockey community, watched Gretta fight her battle with metastatic breast cancer for the past six years. Gretta passed away in June 2025.
“I looked up to her so much,” Emilee said. “She made college honor roll. She did Teach for America. She then taught for 10 years after that. I wanted to do the exact same thing. Everything she did, I wanted to do. I did Teach for America in Chicago.”
Gretta’s infectious love for living life to the fullest was a phenomenon that affected thousands of athletes and students, Emilee said. She calls it, “the Gretta affect.”
Emilee, a Philadelphia native, took over the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy field hockey program in 2019. Emilee played at Mount Saint Joseph’s Academy and then went on to play at Penn State, where she and her teammates won two Big Ten Championships. Emilee was a three-time Academic All-Big Ten player and recipient of the Yvonne Hoffman Ziegler Memorial Field Hockey Scholarship.
Her sister, Gretta, taught her how to set her eyes on something and then keep going until she achieved it.
Teach for America was one of Gretta’s passions: to educate, support, and nurture low-income students. Her deep hunger to make life an adventure nearly every day brought a comforting vibe and expectation that something fun was about to happen, Emilee said.
“She is still everything I want to be,” she said. “She was such a positive role model in my life. And, she will always continue to be. She had this Gretta affect. I was so blessed to be her little sister.”
Colleen Fink, former head coach at the University of Pennsylvania, felt a kindred connection to Gretta. She’s linked up with Emilee and college field hockey coaches in the Philadelphia area seeking to set a spark in the passion that they all share.
They have started a foundation called the ‘Gretta Ehret Dream Crazy Foundation.’ The foundation was hatched while Gretta was still alive and fighting. They want to offer youth access to the game in areas where field hockey is not played and give existing field hockey athletes a chance to give back to underserved communities.
“She went from being a perfectly active and vibrant person, very quickly, to someone in pain,” Fink told Female Athlete News. “People would have never known, especially after her first bout. We thought, ‘she is healthy again. She must have beat it. She must be in remission.’ It was quite frankly her spirit and her fight that is her spirit that hid her suffering.”
That joyful humbleness that she so freely emitted to the world slowly started to come to a grinding halt over the course of the subsequent six years as she fought back.
“The day she started having some medical issues, she was working our Fourth of July camp,” Fink said. “She came up to me and said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ We took her to the emergency room, and a few weeks later, the diagnosis came through. She was the fittest, most full of life person. That’s probably why she was able to fight for as long as she did. It was really gut wrenching.”
One year before she started to experience undeniable cancer symptoms, Gretta discovered a lump and informed her doctor. Due to a lack of family history of breast cancer and the lump's uncommon location in her breast, there was no urgency to remove it at the time.
“Gretta wanted to share the message that women need to self advocate, know your body, know yourself, know when something is not right,” Fink said.
At the same time Emilee and Gretta were mapping out what has now become Dream Crazy for Gretta, her cancer symptoms worsened.
“We had started working on this field hockey academy, and she would say, ‘my stomach is in so much pain,’” Emilee said. “Starting that journey with her was really tough. We were starting this idea together and she now had so much more on her plate.”
Emilee and Gretta were working on how to combine their passions of teaching youth and sharing field hockey.
“I taught in Chicago public schools, charter and public schools, every kind of public school in Philadelphia,” Emilee said. “I would show my kids field hockey videos in Chicago. I got to watch Gretta teach in her classroom. She loved exposing the kids to field hockey. I think this foundation is really going to mend the two things we are both passionate about — teaching youth and getting the word out there about field hockey. And, making it really fun. She always made everything really fun. Me and Colleen are going to do our best to make it happen.”
Gretta played field hockey at Penn Charter, and earned a place in the school’s Athletic Honor Society. Her college career was played at UPenn, where she captained the Quakers and earned All-Ivy honors.
Her family and friends loved seeing the bond between her and her “true love” Pat Farrell. And, the love that they shared with their daughter Rosie.
“When I was the coach at Penn, we partnered with Penn Medicine,” Fink said. “They came and spoke to our athletes about self checks. We tried to take it one step further. Everyone knows what breast cancer is, that’s great. But, what are these checks and are we walking away with a meaningful perspective? Gretta wanted to teach young women how to do a self breast exam. She was very passionate about that.”
The foundation is only just getting started. In recent weeks, several college field hockey games have been played in honor of Gretta and the foundation.
“Gretta hated having breast cancer,” Fink said. “She didn’t want the foundation to be all about that. The foundation we’re putting together — it’s for fighters and survivors. Gretta never wanted anyone to have a terminal diagnosis. We want her legacy to be around access to sports.”
Gretta “really loved” the Nike ‘Dream Crazy’ commercial, Fink said. That is the other part of the inspiration.
“She was undergoing very difficult treatment all five years,” Fink said. “Her mantra became ‘dream crazy.’ Her journey with breast cancer…she wasn’t going to let it define her. She wasn’t going to let this hold her back. She adopted her daughter Rosie, she kept working, she kept coaching, she kept living her life. For me, that is one of the biggest takeaways that she has left on me.”
Fink continued: “Her legacy, it’s two fold: dream crazy. Live your life to the fullest, don’t let anything back you into a corner, and give access to underserved communities. That’s what she was all about. It’s in its infancy. Everything is still a little fresh and a little raw. We know that Gretta wasn’t one to sit idley.”
Instead of fearing women’s health issues being downplayed, Fink and Emilee are channeling their inner Gretta, and forging ahead. Their hope is they can connect with likeminded individuals who see strong women supporting strong women for the sake of establishing a new era of respecting women’s bodies.
“Gretta stories are countless,” Emilee said. “She has reached people we haven’t even met before. She had a way of connecting broadly with people. It’s just who she was. So many people want to be involved. She had an infectious and contagious love of life. She’s someone you just wanted to be with.”
To learn more about the Gretta Ehret Dream Crazy Foundation visit their website at https://dreamcrazyforgretta.org/
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