Women’s ice hockey hopes to retain crown

Morgan Cary

November 10, 2016

Sports

Lady Mustangs ready to claim another title for the ’16-’17 season (photo from gomustangsports.com)

The women’s ice hockey team hopes to stay at the top of their conference as champions of the previous season.

The team graduated 13 seniors and brought on seven freshmen, with a total team of 20 players. As of now, only 17 of those 20 can skate due to injuries.

Freshman Jordan Pirrello scored her first career goal in Season Opening (photo from gomustangsports.com) — Freshman Jordan Pirrello scored her first career goal in the season opening. (Photo from gomustangsports.com)

“We have a younger team this season with no seniors, so we are trying to focus a lot on honing our skill base as well as getting a fresh squad familiar with our system,” third-year coach Tracy Johnson explained. The Mustangs’ young team seems to be having no trouble at all getting ‘familiar with the system,’ shown by their overall record of 3-1 as of Nov. 10.

This season the Mustangs have a goal of getting better every day, focusing their energy on the little things that they can control, that add up to the big things. As Johnson said, “I like to believe if we can take care of the minutes, the hours will take care of themselves.”

Junior Kellen Wittman added, “We have a lot of chemistry on the ice, so we are now just trying to put the pieces together to repeat as conference champions and receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.” The team culture is said to be better than ever, according to Wittman.

The Mustangs are off to a great start with a three-game winning streak and are 2-0 in their conference. After their latest game against Becker College, the Mustangs swept Becker with a 2-0 shutout win in both games over Nov. 5-6. Two players were named Colonial Hockey Conference players of the week after the Becker game: junior Chelsea Blackburn was named player of the week, while freshman Annie Smyth-Hammond was named co-goaltender of the week. This is Smyth-Hammond’s first weekly honor after posting a shutout in her second career start.

The Mustangs hope to keep their win streak going during their next game as they travel Nov. 11 to play Johnson & Wales College for a two-game conference series.

The Mustangs have their first home game of the season at Reisterstown Sportsplex on Nov. 18, against conference rival Endicott College, which will be a President’s Office giveaway event.

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