by Dakota Antelman
The girls’ hockey team entered their January 10 marquee meeting with the Shrewsbury Colonials riding high after being ranked among the top ten division two schools in Massachusetts. They left sorely defeated.
Knocked down by a trio of first period goals by the Colonials, the T-Hawks struggled to gain a footing in the game. Shrewsbury took 15 shots in the first period, peppering the T-Hawks net from close range. They stifled a normally physical T-Hawks defense and kept the puck off T-Hawk sticks for the majority of the first 20 minutes of the game.
Due to their possession struggles, they were only able to counter Shrewsbury’s onslaught with four unsuccessful shots of their own.
“I think the girls were a little too amped up today,“ Coach Jay Monfreda offered as a reason for the slow start. “When they get like that they just get kinda running around the ice and kinda get out of position a little bit. We just needed to settle down and play our game.”
Regulating emotion was a struggle Saturday; more than it would be in a normal game according to Monfreda. The game, held in Worcester’s DCU Center, a near 15,000 seat arena, involved more preparation as well as a greater potential for “nerves” than would be the case in the smaller New England Sports Center that the T-Hawks currently call home.
Eventually though those nerves brought on by the venue seemed to wear off, and the T-Hawks got back to playing the kind of game they wanted to play. Shots were 10-6 in favor of the Colonials in the second period.
They held the Colonials to just one goal in the second period and began moving pucks towards the net with more ease and effectiveness.
“We got to calm down with the puck, just take our time and not give it away,” T-Hawks forward Kayla Currin said about the differences between the first and second periods. “We could have done better, but it definitely was an improvement.”
As Shrewsbury goalie Tiana Army continued to hold the T-Hawks off the scoreboard though, eventually stopping all 16 shots turned her way, frustration set in. In the game’s final ten minutes, the T-Hawks committed six penalties, pushing and shoving after the whistle blew as well.
“It [penalties] was definitely frustration,” Coach Monfreda said. “They showed frustration in between periods and their hard work just really wasn’t paying off. You do tend to see that towards the end of the game. You get frustrated, you get bumped, and you wanna shove her back. It gets kinda crazy and frustrating.”
Kayla Currin described the penalties and the reasons for them as frustration. “We could hear the girls [on Shrewsbury] talk about us in their locker room so that kinda got to us,” Currin said.
Saturday’s loss served as a harsh setback for the previously surging T-Hawks. Nevertheless, they remain in a favorable position in their league. Furthermore, they are eager to make January 10 seem like an anomaly rather than a defining game; especially as the playoffs approach.
“I definitely feel that we have a team that can go deep in the playoffs,” said Monfreda. “We’re a young team so scheduling these good teams, these tougher teams on our schedule, it definitely gives them [the freshmen] a bigger learning curve. With a young team, it’s a learning process for all and we just gotta move forward from here.”
