Girls hockey: Irish finally see the work pay off with ‘W’
Rosemount girls hockey coach Tracy Cassano felt her team was playing well recently, even if the final scores weren’t enough to get the team wins. Cassano preached for the Irish to keep working and believed the results would eventually take care of themselves. She knew with the way Rosemount was playing, the wins would come.By: Brian Hall, Rosemount Town Pages
Rosemount girls hockey coach Tracy Cassano felt her team was playing well recently, even if the final scores weren’t enough to get the team wins.
Cassano preached for the Irish to keep working and believed the results would eventually take care of themselves. She knew with the way Rosemount was playing, the wins would come.
The Irish broke a four-game losing streak Monday in the opening game of the Farmington tournament, but again Cassano wasn’t worried about wins and losses.
“It was nice to win, but I think the important part that we focused on and stressed was how many goals we scored,” Cassano said. “Scoring has been an area of emphasis. We’ve focused on it and continued to work on it and it’s nice to get the monkey off the back.”
Rosemount beat Chippewa Falls (Wis.) 8-1 on Monday. Last week the Irish lost 3-2 to Eagan.
Before Monday, Rosemount hadn’t topped three goals in any game since a 12-0 win against Bloomington Kennedy at the start of December.
“For some reason we’ve struggled to score,” Cassano said. “The last few years scoring really wasn’t something we would have to worry about. Going into games we knew we were going to score goals. The focus was on defense.
“This year it’s been a little bit of a turnaround. I don’t know why. It’s like they have this black cloud hanging over their heads.”
So snapping a losing streak wasn’t quite as important as the way the victory came.
Kayla Goehring and Allison Micheletti each scored three goals. Rachael Kelly had two goals and three assists.
Sadie Bigelbach, Taylor Sampson, Micheletti, Kendra Goodrich, and Rachel Vath also tallied assists.
“Another thing we pointed out was the way we scored goals,” Cassano said. “We got those tough, battling goals which we haven’t had a lot of this year. It’s nice to get the pretty goals where you dangle, stick handle and shoot and score. But (against Chippewa Falls) it was more about those hard-nosed goals; get a shot on net, crash and bury a rebound. Those are the types of goals we feel we will need down the road. So it was nice to see us score quite a few goals that way.”
Rosemount scored just once in the first period, but erupted for five goals in the second.
“It was nice to put a team away instead of just sneaking by with a 3-0, 3-1 win,” Cassano said.
Caitlin Dantzscher made 10 saves in goal.
Against Eagan, Goehring and Micheletti scored, but the Wildcats tallied the game-winner with just five seconds remaining.
“That was a devastating loss,” Cassano said.
Tags: girls hockey, sports
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