Lucas Punkari
The Rainy River Community College Voyageurs women’s hockey team find themselves in a familiar but different situation this weekend as they travel to Wooster, Ohio to defend their ACHA Division 2 crown.
While this year’s appearance is the fifth-straight for a program that has won three of the last four national titles, the route this edition of the Voyageurs took has been a tougher one, with an injury making an impact.
“We lost Carlee Bosma for the year with a torn ACL, which is the first time that we have had a year-ending injury like that since I’ve been here,” noted head coach Evan Amdahl.
“As a result, we had to move one of our forwards [Thea-Marie Sauca] back to defence where she started the year, and we now have two lines and four defensive players,” he explained.
“Hopefully, our defence and our goaltending, which have been the strongest aspects of our team this year, are able to carry us through and we can get some 1-0 or 2-1 wins,” Amdahl added.
This year’s team finished the regular season with an 11-3-6 record to sit second in the final ACHA West rankings, trailing only the Wisconsin-Stout Blue Devils in the coaches’ poll.
“Nine of our 20 games this year went to overtime, and we only lost one of those, so that’s a pretty good accomplishment and I think that says a lot about our conditioning,” Amdahl said.
“You dance with what brought you here, and we will be doing that with our defensive play and our goaltending,” he reasoned.
“We’re a very defensive-minded team this year compared to last year, and we have had to work a lot harder this year to make it to the nationals, so it’s more rewarding for us in that sense,” noted Voyageurs’ captain Jenna Brady.
Part of that solid play at the back end came from Fort Frances native Katelynn Stearns, who earned four shutouts between the pipes and sports a 0.80 GAA heading into the post-season.
“I think I’ve been playing all right,” said the soft-spoken Stearns, who is in her third season with the Voyageurs.
“We’ve been in a few too many overtime games than I would have liked, but that has helped me out a lot, especially going into the nationals,” she reasoned.
“It feels good to be going back there again, and it’s going to be exciting to go against some new teams that we haven’t faced before.”
The first opponent for the Voyageurs will be a very familiar one, though, as they’ll open action against the Alaska Nanooks on Saturday at 6:15 p.m. (ET).
“We played Alaska earlier this year here, and we split our series against them with a 1-0 win and a 2-1 loss,” Amdahl recalled.
“We both know what we have, and we’ve actually been helping each other with game tapes and that sort of thing, which has kind of made the girls a little bit upset,” he conceded.
“But in order to get better, you have to step up your game when the league is getting better, which is something that we saw this year,” he stressed.
The Voyageurs then will conclude Pool ‘A’ play Sunday at 8 a.m. (ET) when they face the Delaware Blue Hens, who finished first overall in the final East region rankings.
“They finished 11-0-1 this year, and they have a goalie [Brie Scolaro] who is just phenomenal,” Amdahl noted.
“We played [against] her a couple of years ago at the nationals and she was very good then, and last year against South Dakota State she had 50 saves.
“So we know what she brings to the table and we have to get a lot of shots on her,” he added.
The top two teams in pool play advance to the semi-finals Sunday night, with the championship game slated for Monday at 6 p.m. (ET).
Also this week, four members of the Voyageurs squad were named All-Americans by the ACHA, with Stearns being named the first team goaltender and Brady received second team honours on the blue-line.
Sauca and Bosma both earned honorable mention honours.
