What A Start
OWATONNA — For the first time since December 2003, the Owatonna girls hockey team celebrated at the end of the game against Rochester Mayo.
DEREK SULLIVAN
dsullivan@owatonna.com
Posted: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 11:18 pm
|
The Huskies defeated the Spartans 2-1 in overtime on Tuesday night at the Four Seasons Centre. Coming into game, Mayo had won 15 of the last 16 meetings. The two teams did play to a 3-3 tie in 2008. Four of the 15 Mayo wins ended Owatonna’s season. One of those OHS four losses came last year when Mayo scored with 33 seconds to tie Owatonna at 2-2 in the Section 1AA playoffs. The Spartans would win the game 3-2 in double overtime.
Seniors Cailyn McCauley, Paige Lysne and Keshia Reuvers had lost time and time again to the Spartans since they moved up to varsity in 2006. McCauley’s goal with 2 minutes, 46 seconds left in overtime ended the seven-year drought. Owatonna’s other goal came from junior Emily Cochran.
“This win feels so good for me. I can only imagine it felt 10 times better for (the seniors).” Cochran said. “I don’t even know if I’ve ever watched our high school team beat Mayo before. I don’t think I’ve seen it. We’ve never beat them since I’ve been on the team. (The seniors) have never beat them. It feels really good for all of us.”
For a while, it looked like Owatonna was going to win with only Cochran’s goal on the scoreboard. With 13:55 left in the second period, senior Taylor Disher got the puck to Cochran, who took a shot just right of the goal. Mayo goalie Rebecca Graham blocked the shot right back to Cochran who took full advantage of the second chance.
“I got to where the puck was and beat the goalie,” she said.
Mayo, as it has done often the past seven years, scored late to tie the game. Senior Emma Rucinski let fly a shot from 20 feet that somehow got over Reuvers’ right shoulder and tied the game at 1-1 with 3:00 left.
The Huskies didn’t drop their heads after the late score. Owatonna went right back on the attack and got several solid scoring chances in the final three minutes of regulation. In overtime, the Huskies had three shots on goal in the first 30 seconds. Owatonna won the game when McCauley fired a shot from 25 feet into a crowd in front of the Mayo goal. It looked like the puck might have bounced off of two or three players before landing in the net.
“We told the girls to keep firing,” Hunst said. “Good things happen when you get a quick shot off. It doesn’t even have to be a blast.”
The win was No. 149 for Hunst, who has been piling up victories against teams other than the Spartans the past seven years.
“It feels longer than that,” Hunst said. “Back before (2003), we owned them. We beat them every time. They have been on a good run and it was nice to see that monkey lifted off the girls’ back.
“The thing that I’m really proud of isn’t even in the win, it’s the way they went about business tonight. We have been talking ever since the end of last year that we want to out-work and out-play every team we play, every period, and tonight I felt we did that.”
Owatonna (1-0 Big Nine, 1-0 overall) next plays at 7:30 p.m. Thursday against Champlin Park at the Four Seasons Centre. The Huskies’ next two games are against metro teams.
“They are really good up there and they probably have more money than we do,” Cochran said. “It helps us a lot to play those hard teams. It makes us work harder. We get better while we are playing them.
“It shows them that we can play hockey down here. We aren’t just some team from southern Minnesota that just got thrown together. We can compete with those teams.”
Owatonna goals: Second period: 1. Emily Cochran (unassisted) 3:05. Overtime: 2. Cailyn McCauley (Kelsey Rohrig, Aimee Goodew) 5:14. Owatonna goalie: Keshia Reuvers (22 saves).
