Women's Ice Hockey: My first semester.

Hey all!
I am quite new to this blogging thing, so here goes nothing. I am a senior Biochemistry major and Religious Studies minor here at Saint Mikes. This year has been quite difficult for me and being a part of the ice hockey team thus far because I also was one of the captains of the field hockey team. According to an adjustment from the NCAA, our field hockey season was extended to two weeks longer than previous seasons. The meant that our last game was on November 13th.

Being a part of the ice hockey team as well I missed all of dry land (which starts in September, so I always miss that) and a month of on ice practices including five games. This has been really hard to deal with because I haven't quite been able to connect with all the new players. That being said, my first game with the team was November 19th at 4:00 vs. UMass Boston, after only 3 days of practice. That game went pretty well in my eyes, though we did lose 2-1. The next day, the 20th, we lost to Saint Anselm 6-0. This game started off well, but as it went on we began to lose our intensity and allowed a few unanswered goals. This of course is never good becuase in most games it is hard to pick yourself and your team up after being down by a few goals.

The next weekend I missed our two games at Sacred Heart University, a Division I school. I was in Louisville, KY for the NFHCA Division II Senior All-Star game. It was an honor to be selected to play, and was a lot of fun getting to know some of the girls who I had been playing against for the past four years. Though I was not present at the Sacred Heart game I felt great pride and joy for my teammates as I texted one of them to find out what had happened. The first game my team had ended up losing by one, but on Saturday we came out with a victory! This was quite an accomplishment since we are a Division III school in ice hockey.

The weekend after that (December 10th and 11th), I was able to travel with my team to play Potsdam. This weekend marked the official beginning of my ice hockey season as I saw it, because there would be no more interruptions from field hockey events. We struggled with the puck that weekend and although we scored 5 goals, pretty good for us, they scored more. We ended up losing both games by 3 goals. This was disappointing and frustrating to every one of us because we knew we could have given them better games. Sometimes the outcome of all your hard work is not always what you would like it to be.

So this ended our fall semester with a record of 2-8-1. We were looking forward to a better half of the season with the start of Winter break and the New year.

- Kaleigh