Girls hockey: Irish skate to third in Farmington

• Third place

The Irish beat host Farmington in the third place game of the Louis Schmitz Holiday Classic.

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The Rosemount girls hockey team is in the midst of a busy schedule of games.

The Irish played five games in a nine-day stretch. They play three games in five days next week.

Of course, if more wins are coming, the hectic schedule will be easier to handle.

While Rosemount coach Tracy Cassano liked the way the team was playing during December, the Irish had lost four straight games heading into last week’s tournament in Farmington. The past two weeks offered a nice change as far as final results, but the coach thought the overall play was a bit mixed.

Rosemount (7-7-2, 4-4-2 Lake) won three of the past five games. At Farmington, the Irish beat Chippewa Falls 8-1 before a 3-1 loss to Park. They beat Farmington, 4-3, for third place in the tournament.

Rosemount also beat Bloomington Jefferson, 6-0, last week. On Tuesday, the Irish took a 3-3 tie at Apple Valley.

All the good feelings faded a bit though after the tie. Rosemount beat Apple Valley 5-2 earlier this season.

“It was extremely disappointing, not just from the staff, and the players as well,” Cassano said.

After feeling better about the offense in some of the recent games, the biggest concern for Cassano crept in again.

“When you’re only allowing 12 shots in a game, you expect to win,” she said. “Then we get almost 50 shots. We didn’t finish. We didn’t get the rebounds in front of the net, which was frustrating for everybody. It’s one of those things that you learn from and look forward. Don’t dwell and look back. It wasn’t our best performance, but we still have nine games left and we have to move forward and get back to how we were playing before.”

Allison Micheletti, Amanda Comstock and Lauren Riley scored for Rosemount. Micheletti, Sarah Tollefson, Sadie Bigelbach, Abbey Knoop and Sydney Lubeley had assists.

The offense wasn’t a problem against Jefferson last week.

Rachael Kelly and Micheletti scored in the first period. Tollefson, Kelly and Micheletti scored in the second, and Rachel Vath finished the scoring in the third.

Taylor Sampson had two assists.

Irish goaltender Caitlin Dantzscher made 14 saves for the shutout.

“That was something we needed to do,” Cassano said. “We didn’t play down a level, which I think we might have done (against Apple Valley). We took care of business.”

Tags: girls hockey, sports, prep, rosemount