The Wisconsin Women's Hockey team is now 8-5-1 with two games this
weekend.  Our last league games were two weekends ago, when we
beat St. Cloud 4-1, lost 3-2 to the Bladerunners, and beat the
Valey Girls.  Overall a very successful road trip.
 
Each game had some interesting aspects as well.  For the St. Cloud game,
we got to play on the big ice sheet, it was a lot of fun.  I don't think
anyone on our team had played on Olypic sized ice before that.  It was
also kinda neat seeing the Wisconsin banner hanging in the rink, even
though we knew it wasn't for our league.  It was great to win against
St. Cloud since we had not beat thme in four years, and had lost 3-0 to
them earlier in the season, even though we had many scoring opportunities.
 
The game was a tight battle, we got the first lead which remained until the
end of the first period.  The Bladerunners tied the game in the second but
we then pulled ahead again.  Late in the third, they tied the game again
and then got the game winning goal with 11 seconds to go.  It was very
frustrating, especially since we had had the puck in our zone, and they
intercepted a shot by our right D which enabled them to skate the length
of the ice and convert.
 
For the third game, some of our players had left since they needed to
get back to Madison.  This left us with 8 skaters and a goalie.  It
was quite tiring playing with 3D, 2C, and 3W rotating.
 
Another interesting aspect of the weekend was in the goalie department.
Our regular goalie had just gotten back from visiting her husband in
Australia, so we had someone who had wanted to give it a try play in the
net.  The first time she ever had the gear on was Thursday's paractice,
but she was great, a real natural.
 
Last weekend we played a non-conference game against Ligget, which we lost
3-1.  It was fustrating since they got 2 goals early and then we played them
even.
 
We also scrimmaged against the off campus B-team, and lost 3-1.  We were
fairly happy with that result, since most of them have been playing a long
time, and this is still the second year of hockey for most of our team.
 
Our games this weekend are against Blades of Steel.  We also have another
scrimmage against the B-team planned.
 
Wendy Istvancik
Go Badgers!!!