By Drew Wemple
The SUNY Plattsburgh Women’s hockey team took to the road this past weekend with two conference games ahead of them. Their first stop was Potsdam, with a matchup with a North Country rival Dec. 3.
The Cards rolled against the Bears, scoring early and often. They would take the win on their first stop, 6-1. With that win, the Lady Cardinals have now won 31 consecutive games vs. Potsdam, dating all the way back to 2008.
Their next stop was Canton, New Yorkfor another Northeast Women’s Hockey League conference opponent. The SUNY Canton Roos hosted the Cardinals this past Saturday afternoon, a game in which Plattsburgh played as strongly as the night before. Plattsburgh would win the game 4-1 and collect two conference wins on the weekend.
Dating back to before the road trip, Plattsburgh had hosted the annual Cardinal/Panther Classic tournament, from Nov. 27 to Nov. 28. The Lady Cardinals got a bit of a wake up call in that tournament, after winning their first six games to start the year, they lost in their first round matchup of the tourney, vs. Endicott College in overtime, 4-3. The next day, they took on Elmira College in the consolation round, where they would also drop in overtime by the same score, 4-3.
“Losing both those games was tough,” said forward Annie Katonka. “I thought we played really well on Sunday against Elmira. So coming into practice, we had a lot of momentum and energy and everyone was pretty hyped up because we had just lost. I think heading into that weekend’s game vs. Potsdam everyone was excited to avenge the losses and get back out there and on the winning track.”
On Dec. 3, the women sought to get back to their winning ways and showed they were up to the task early. In the first period junior Ivy Boric scored the opening goal five minutes into the period off an assist from first-year student Mattie Norton. They didn’t let up either, as just six minutes later senior Nicole Unsworth found the back of the net, assisted by graduate student Kaitlin Drew-Mead, to extend their early lead to 2-0.
“We were able to get out to that early lead because we kind of just stuck to the game plan. I mean, we knew that if we could get one goal past we could get a couple goals past,” Katonka said. “They had a freshman goalie so we needed to take advantage of her inexperience, and I think that helped us get out to the lead, just continually getting pucks on net.”
