Week 11: Season comes to a close for Centaurs
The Woodstock Academy girls hockey cooperative season came to a close on Saturday night.
“It flew,” first-year coach Eric Roy said. “I thought we were just in the preseason and now, here we are. But it was a good season. I have no complaints about the season. We went through some adversity, we’re young, so we’re just going to build on that.”
The Centaurs finished up the year with a 7-2 loss to the Suffield Cooperative program on Saturday at the Jahn Ice Rink at Pomfret School.
It concluded a year in which the Centaurs invited players in from other Eastern Connecticut Conference schools such as East Lyme, Ledyard, Wheeler and Fitch as well as a non-ECC school, Norwich Tech.
“It went better than I expected,” Roy said. “I figured we would be struggling along, suffering some bad losses here and there but we fought every game. We haven’t had many lopsided games.”
It looked like the game against the Wildcats would go down as the worst loss of the season as the Centaurs struggled through the first two periods.
They had seven penalties called against them which resulted in four power play goals for Suffield. Senior Natalie Ewald scored two of those for the Wildcats and also added a shorthanded tally.
Suffield broke out to a 7-0 lead over the first two periods but the Centaurs won the third period, 2-1.
Juliette Hammer scored her third goal of the season off an assist from senior Keynila Hochard with 8 minutes, 15 seconds left to play. Freshman Riley Faber then added her second goal of the season just a little under a minute later.
“All season long, this has been a third period team. I don’t know what it is. In the offseason, I’m going to go home and figure out how to make them think it’s the third period, every period because they’re a different team and they just go and usually win the third period,” Roy said.
Freshman Maci Corradi finished as the team leader in scoring with 17 points, 13 of those points were goals. Mia Williamson (3 goals) finished with 13 points, Sophia Gouveia (6 goals) added 12 and Hochard finished with 11.
The Centaurs finished with a 3-17-1 overall record, 3-12 against Connecticut opponents.
But it wasn’t the record that truly mattered to the coaching staff or the players.
It was just putting a program like this together.
“We’re incredibly hopeful (for the future). We have a great group of girls. This program is getting better and better and people want to be a part of it. It’s so cool to see the various schools seek us out and want to be a part of it. It gives girls the opportunity to play this awesome game. I’m excited,” assistant coach Jeff Boshka said.
The last week of the season for Woodstock Academy girls hockey got underway with another long road trip.
The Centaurs traveled to Shelton to play the Trumbull/St. Joseph cooperative program early in the week.
The hosts skated away with the 4-1 win.
Trumbull scored the first two goals before Gouveia scored her sixth goal of the season, and third in the last two games, just 48 seconds into the second period.
Trumbull, however, got the last two tallies to take home the win.
The Centaurs followed that up with a trip to West Haven on Thursday.
The West Haven/Sacred Heart Academy team jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first two periods before the Centaurs attempted another third quarter rally.
Caitlyn Flynn did get a goal for Woodstock Academy off an assist from Gouveia in the third period but the rally fell short as the hosts skated away with a 3-1 victory.
.
