by Blake Krantz
Girls’ hockey, 2-4, is “trying to work together a little bit better” going forward, in games which are “critical towards making the tournament,” according to senior Alexa McAuliffe, a captain with senior Megan Lenihan.
“Every game we need to go out strong and fight from start to finish if we want to achieve our goal,” McAuliffe elaborated.
According to Bob MacDougall, the coach of the team, the Tigers learned from several games at the beginning of the year, with both positive and negative results.
In the first game of the year, the Tigers beat a “really good team” in Braintree 2-1, according to MacDougall, who added that “we were enthusiastic and optimistic about how we played, we were down early and the girls showed a lot of resiliency, they kept fighting, and we were able to earn a 2-1 win.”
McAuliffe similarly labeled the first win of the season over Braintree as a highlight of the young season, which, despite the team’s record, has showed promise.
For Lenihan, much of the Tigers’ success this season can be attributed to chemistry between different lines on the ice, in addition to the emergence of new faces on the team. “The younger players are confident and meshing well with upperclassmen on the ice,” she said, adding that “we have the drive to win games.”
The team next played hard-fought games against Walpole and Milton, in which “every mistake seemed to be in the back of our net,” as MacDougall put it. An 8-6 loss against Weymouth was also a key game for the team, in which the team “did a lot of good things, but could not seem to stay on top. When we went down against Weymouth, we kept fighting but didn’t have enough energy to come out on top,” MacDougall explained.
McAuliffe saw the loss in a positive light, as an effort to build off of throughout the rest of the season in the new year of hockey for the Tigers’ tournament aspirations.
“We played really well right before break away against Weymouth. Even though it was a loss it was a very close game and it was back and forth the entire night. We just played tough and never gave in or gave up, fighting long and hard until the end,” she said.
The break is a dividing point in the beginning of every season, according to MacDougall, who believes that the Tigers usually are not “defined as a team” until the next few games in January after vacation.
Lenihan added that in the future, the team will work on “applying their hard work at practice to games,” one factor which likely drove her excitement to “get into the grind and middle part of the hockey season.”