Girls basketball: Streaking Irish improve to 11-7-2

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Back in December, the coaches of the Rosemount girls hockey team knew there would be better days ahead.

Head coach Tracy Cassano insisted that she liked the way the team was playing, even if the final results were losses. The coach insisted the wins would come.

Now they are.

The Irish beat Rochester Mayo, 4-3, last week. Two days later, they beat Bloomington Kennedy, 15-1. On Tuesday, Rosemount beat Chaska/Chanhassen, 4-2.

With four straight wins, and wins in seven of the past nine games, the Irish are seeing the results of continued hard work.

“We’re playing really well right now,” Cassano said. “I feel like we’ve been playing well for a long time. Even when we talked before Christmas and we had a few losses in a row, I still liked what I was seeing with the girls. They were making correct decisions. The wins just weren’t coming with all the hard work they were putting in.

“Now it’s gotten to the point where, we’ve kept with our system that we’ve been trying to do the whole season, and now we are getting a little payback and return with the wins coming with the hard work we’re putting in.”

The Irish even dealt with some distractions on the trip to Rochester. The team bus first didn’t go to the correct arena and the team was delayed in getting to their destination. The pregame warmup routine ended up being longer than Rosemount was used to, and there was a mix-up with the national anthem as the singer forgot the words.

“There were some unusual circumstances and distractions,” Cassano said. “No excuses, but it might have just thrown our routine off a little bit. We played fantastic and took it to them in the second and did what we thought we could do.

“We were confident the whole night and thought we had the game in hand. We weren’t really nervous about the situation.”

The Irish scored four goals to take control in the second.

Rachael Kelly, Allison Micheletti, Taylor Sampson, and Kayla Goehring each scored for Rosemount. Amanda Comstock, Sarah Tollefson and Micheletti tallied assists.

The Irish then opened up with seven goals in the first period against Kennedy and added eight more in the second.

“The biggest thing is again, it was a game where we should control the pace from start to finish and we did that,” Cassano said. “We had multiple players score. That’s a good confidence builder for everybody.”

Rosemount scored three times in the first 47 seconds of the game. Comstock scored 21 seconds in on assists from Amanda Wilson and Sidney Lubeley. Kelly scored 12 second later with assists to Goehring and Rachel Vath. Hannah Esselman ended the flurry with a goal 14 seconds later with assists to Kelly and Goehring.

Kelly had three goals and three assist. Vath scored two goals to go with two assists. Micheletti had two goals and two assists, while Sampson had a goal and two assists.

Goehring tallied a goal and five assists. Comstock and Jenna Bangerter each had a goal and an assist.

Sarah Tollefson, Kendra Goodrich and Allison Warweg also scored goals for the Irish.

Against Chaska, Rosemount was shorthanded for much of the game, including four 5-on-3 situations. The Irish were outshot 34-17, but came out ahead.

Kelly had three goals and Goodrich added the final tally in the third. Sampson had three assists, while Caitlin Dantzscher made 32 saves in goal.

“I thought we did really well battling through some of the penalty killing and showed some good character and mental and physical toughness,” Cassano said. “It’s tough to be put in that position over and over, but we didn’t lose our composure. And Caity Dantzscher played her best game in quite a while I felt.”

Tags: girls hockey, sports, rosemount, irish, prep, minnesota