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Sawyer Anchors Owatonna Girls Hockey Past Austin 6-1

By Kaleb Radel, 11/19/13, 10:00AM CST

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Abby Sawyer pumped in three goals and assisted on another to anchor Owatonna to a 6-1 home win over Austin.

Stacked with players who possess a nose for the net, the Owatonna girls hockey team has the potential to tout a different leading-scorer night in and night out.

Saturday night was Abby Sawyer’s turn.

The senior forward pumped in three goals and assisted on another to anchor Owatonna to a 6-1 home win over Austin in a Big Nine Conference opener at the Four Seasons Centre.

“This is kind of how it works for us; we have a bunch of weapons and on any given night any one of them can help us,” OHS coach Tim Hunst said. “First game it was Payton (Noble) who piped in with four, the second game it was Abby who piped in with three.”

Sawyer’s hat-trick didn’t get started until 6 minutes, 48 seconds into the second period when she found the back of the net on an unassisted goal. Her next two came in a 2:20-span in the third, scoring on the power play at 9:11 and on another unassisted shot at 11:31.

“There are others on the team that can do the same thing,” Hunst said. “We just need one of them to do it each night. They don’t really care who does it.”

The Huskies, who outshot the Packers by 40 (53-13), struggled offensively early on as they peppered 20 shots in the first period. Finally, at 16:53 in the frame, Paige Radue ripped the net to give Owatonna a 1-0 boost.

“We started off, strangely enough, having a hard time scoring,” Hunst said. “We hit a bunch of pipes, shot a bunch in the goaltender, and she made some good saves. We just couldn’t find a way to get in the net … we just stayed with it, we just kept going, and found a way to poke a goal in. And from there we started to assert ourselves.”

Meghan Rethemeier and Jessica VonRudden added goals for the Huskies (2-0), who erupted for four goals in the third to put an exclamation point on their conference-opener victory.

“We approach the conference games with a high priority and feel that those are the games that we definitely should be approaching that we should win,” Hunst said. “We’re definitely doing the things that we are expecting to right now.”

Owatonna travels to Rochester Mayo for a Big Nine showdown at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Owatonna 6, Austin 1

OHS 1 1 4

AHS 0 1 0

First period

O-Paige Radue (Payton Noble, Megan Price), 16:53

Second period

O-Abby Sawyer, 6:48

A-Hoium (Semones), 13:02

Third period

O-Megan Rethemeier (Peyton DeVinny, Alix Shallau), 6:34

O-Sawyer (Jenna Bogen, Price), 9:11 PP

O-Sawyer, 11:31

O-Jessica VonRudden (Sawyer), 16:11 PP

Saves: Jess Cole 6, Kacy Borwege 6

Reach sports editor Kaleb Roedel at 444-2374, or follow him on Twitter.com @OPPKaleb