Three-peat Complete

Congratulations, ACME Skating Co. (beep beep)! Division champions for the third year in a row at the annual Everett Ravens "Fools on Ice" Womens Ice Hockey Tournament. Oh, and despite the images, this was a *Spring* tournament, but you have the admit the jack-o-lantern tape work on Tamara was apropos (see below). Quick recap of how we got there:

Friday night: Faced off against a local team made up of girls who were considerably younger than us! Haha....but, the group of "girls" were a tenacious bunch and certainly made us more "mature" women work for our win. First, we were off to a shaky start. I missed about 7 minutes of the first period because of the ridiculous traffic on I-5....grrrr. But, that was fine because I knew that we had a full roster and that Patrick would adjust the lines accordingly until I got on the ice (I was one of nine forwards). However, I showed up at the door and saw Karen in the net. Um, what's wrong with this picture is that Karen is one of our regular defense players - yeah, NO GOALIE!! Goalie, Tamara, was stuck in the same traffic I was in and she actually missed the entire first period. Kudos to Karen for her 1st period shutout. Thankfully, Karen was a goalie before so she played it as well as she could. Not our best game because: a) of the shaky start, and; b) getting used to playing with other people we don't regularly play with. But, we managed to squeeze out a victory (2-1).

Saturday am: Our next game in the morning was against the Everett Ravens. Patrick shuffled the lines a little bit and I got the honor of playing with two players I admire and have the utmost respect for: Mel and Sharon. They both have excellent technical skills, but are also smart players and we got some great cycling and passing going. Our line may not have been the highest scoring line, but we were strong when it came to puck possession and I got to work on some of my own personal goals which is more patience with the puck and smarter passes. And, more give and go's. It was a much better game than the previous night and even though we dominated the game and were outshooting the Ravens 2-1, it was close for the first two periods. Final score was 7-2.

Saturday pm: Game was against the Utah Ice Vixens - a team we've never played before. Yeah, it was a rude awakening because they were *much* more physical than the previous two teams we played. And, because of the contact, there were a lot of penalties as well. I've managed to stay out of the sin-bin for a long time...uh, oh....did I just jinx myself for the next tournament? We had a lot of penalty kills and had to reshuffle lines on the fly. But, Patrick was an amazing coach and got us to stay focused on the game despite the awful calls (er, non-calls) by the refs. Final score - 2-1...buh, bye Utah.

Sunday am: Final championship round. We were facing the same team (Phoenix) that we played Friday night. But, before that, we watched a bunch of our SWHC teammates who were playing on another team go through a shoot-out in their championship round for their division. Nerve-racking but they won 1-0 in the shoot-out. Way to go "Pick Up Sticks!!" Just watching that game did nothing for me but add more pre-game jitters. I wished there was a spin bike at that rink because I could've used a few minutes to do a full-on sprint to shake off my anxiety. I should've borrowed Tamara's jump rope. Finally, we got on the ice but it was more like a pond (an unfrozen one)....like they took out the firehouse and flooded the rink in between games! So, the first part of the game was a lot of dump and chase until all those puddles disappeared. The Phoenix "girls" came out a lot more physical than our game on Friday. But, then again, they weren't exactly strong on their skates either and fell over pretty easily. Or, maybe that was how they were going to break up our play...by crashing into us or in front of us? That's how it felt anyway. Once again, bad ref'ing...in fact, it was downright awful. And, we had to kill off a lot of penalties...one time Phoenix had a 2-man advantage for 2 minutes...but we emphatically shut that down. It wasn't our best game, but we made it up with our tenacity despite the "tournament legs" that were starting to set in. We pulled ahead 2-1 with about 10 minutes left in the game and that was our final score. Congratulations, ladies!! And, a huge 'thanks' to Patrick for coaching us to another victory. Three-peat is sweet.