St. Olaf gave us quite a scare last night (Saturday), but we were able to pull through with two short-handed goals in the third period to win the game. We were down 2-1 going into the third period and we handled a stressful situation well. Our team is really beginning to show that we can compete which has definitely been a concern for us in the past. St. Olaf's goalies showed that they definitely can and will give us a challenge. The win was really exciting for us and left a good taste in our mouths going into Thanksgiving weekend. We will not have games over
Thanksgiving so I think we will be able to enjoy our week off after the win.

Friday night's game was not quite so exciting. We had a breakout period in the second period scoring 4 goals. We continued to dominate through the rest of the game and ended up winning 6-0. I was excited because I got my first goal of the season. I haven't been scoring much at all this year so it is encouraging to know that I can actually still do it. Hockey can be frustrating when you get opportunities but can't put the puck away. That seems to be my problem lately. It's just really nice that I have so many talented teammates that have been able to get the job done and be on fire lately.

I was really impressed by St. Olaf's work ethic on Saturday night. They never stopped and though we won, I give them a lot of credit for showing up to play after a loss on Friday night. We turned in goal sheets and I think one of our team goals is to be recognized as one of the hardest working teams in the our conference. With that being said, it is not hard for me to notice the other teams that work really hard as well.

We have two days of school this week. Being an English major I have a long paper due at the beginning of the week before I go on break. We have a short off-ice practice today since we don't have ice. After that, I'll be off to do homework and try to get this ten-pager squared away.

Lately we have been practicing at the Mankato Civic Center, which is where we traveled to today. It is probably our closest option as far as available ice rinks around the area. We have been lucky we've been able to get ice time there as the rink has adequate locker room space and the arena staff lets us leave our equipment there. Our focus this week has been passing and today especially empasized looking before shooting to find an open spot. I didn't feel today was our best practice, but Tuesdays are generally hard practices and we stuck through it well.

The Civic Center in Mankato is where the Division I Mankato State Mavericks play their games. We decided last week that we like practicing there because on Thursday evenings, the Mankato State men's weekend opponent from the WCHA practices before us. Last week, the boys from Colorado College were in town. Being the college girls that we are, we were excited to talk to some of the Colorade College boys as we were getting on the ice for practice and they were getting off. Needless to say, we got teased a little by our coaches for trying to make quick conversation with the DI players.

Practice was highlighted today by an interesting encounter on the bus to Mankato. On our way down from campus, something started smelling really funny especially toward the rear of the bus. Also, there seemed to be a significant amount of exhuast coming out. At first we didn't think much of it, but as we got closer and closer to Mankato the smell got worse.

When we arrived at the Civic Center, the first couple of girls that got off the bus turned around and noticed acutal flames coming out from underneath the school bus. At that point we were quickly ushered off the bus and told to get into the building as soon as possible. 

Many of us couldn't believe that we were riding a flaming bus. We were thankful everything turned out ok. However, it caused quite a bit of excitement and commotion in the locker room as we were getting dressed. One of my teammates joked making the comment that if we had all died in a bus explosion, Disney would have been sure to make a movie about us. We found this very exciting and proceeded to assign and determine which actresses would play which teammate. This turned into quite a good conversation as we debated which girl from our team was most likely to be portrayed by Cameron Diaz, and whether or not Nicole Kidman was too old to portray a college student in a movie.

After practice we rode a different bus back to Gustavus and arrived safely. After so much excitement, I now have to focus in on school work. This is quite a busy week for me as far as homework goes, so I really need to start in on that about now.

We are quite disappointed that the rink still is not in. There is apparently some mechanical issues that makes it so we won't be able to practice on campus until after Thanksgiving. We thought we may possibly be able to have our St. Olaf home game in our own rink this weekend, but I guess now it won't be possible. We will be playing the Oles over in New Ulm on Friday in the first game of the conference match-up. We are thankful that New Ulm has been so accommodating in helping us host our games. Last weekend, when we played St. Mary's at the New Ulm rink, things went very smoothly- even with being in a different "home" rink.

We beat St. Mary's in both games last weekend and proved that we are continually improving every week, which is really good to see. There was definitely better effort and we are progressing well in working with our teammates to make one another look good. Our lines were a little different in this series which is happens quite a bit for us in the beginning of the season. It's a little tough to get used to our forward lines changing often, but eventually I think we will settle on something that works so that we can really narrow in our skills and learn each others tendencies.

Beating St. Mary's was a good way to start up our conference play. On Saturday at the St. Mary's rink, we had a pretty tight game up until the third period which was somewhat nerve-racking. We pulled it out though and proved we could be a disciplined team and finish out a game with good special teams (especially the penalty kill), and just by making our shifts shorter. We will continue to build on what we learned against St. Mary's when we play St. Olaf, which sort of a rival team. They will give us their best game, so we need to be prepared to be tough mentally through the entire match-up.

We were thankful to have a really good Monday practice this week! Often Mondays are really hard to get back into it as most of us are getting our legs back because of post-series soreness and a day off on Sunday. Usually Monday practices are a little out of sync, but I think our team really made up our minds to get through Monday with a good attitude and hard work. Hopefully our Monday practice is a precursor to a good week of practice, and a better weekend of games.

We got most of our long distance bus rides out of the way at the beginning of the season, which is really great. From now on, our longest away bus ride will be about an hour and a half to the Twin Cities to play various team in our MIAC Conference. The games against St. Olaf this weekend will wrap up the first few series of our season. Following St. Olaf, we will be able to enjoy a long Thanksgiving break. It will be good for us to get  a little time off from school and hockey and enjoy time with family.  

 

We'll kick off our conference games this weekend against St. Mary's. Unfortunately, the rink back at Gustavus is still not finished so we will have our Friday night home game in nearby town New Ulm. The bus ride for a home game will be new for us, but I think we have gotten used to the bus rides enough during the week to handle the difference. Last night we put together some of our goals for this weekend's series. We sat down as a team and decided the two things we felt we most wanted to do was capitalize on a strong start and also to maintain our start intensity throughout the entire series.

We spent some time this week watching film from our Adrian series. We looked very sloppy, especially the passing, which was way off. The lines have changed a little and I really hope that this enables us to make good quality passes, but also get rid of the puck quickly and efficiently. Now that we have a sense of how our systems work during a game, I think we will be more prepared in forechecking and defensive coverage as well.

Before games, we always meet as a team to have some sort of team meal. We try to eat together in the Gustavus cafeteria about 4 hours before the game start time. The caf workers at Gustavus are always so kind to us. We have really great people who work in there and are always keeping up to date on our hockey games and take a genuine interest in us. One of them always makes sure to hand out "good luck mints" to us following our meal which we always enjoy.

It'll be nice to start our conference games. I love home games because we usually have quite a few friends and family that come to cheer us on. The student population at our game will probably be quite a bit smaller tonight because of the travel distance, but as always, many parents will be sure to show up and support us. They always do. Conference games are always pretty exciting and I know that most of the conference has us labeled as a team to beat. That definitely puts the pressure on, but it also makes the games that much more intense and fun.

This past weekend's road trip to Adrian proved quite a learning experience for us as a team. We had a nice morning skate on Friday morning in order to prepare us for the game. Unfortunately Friday night's game didn't go as well as we hoped. We lost in overtime 2-1. This was disappointing because we felt we outplayed Adrian, but just couldn't capitalize on our power plays and opportunitites at the end of the game. Adrian's overtime goal came on a break away at the end of the game. Our goalie played well the entire game, but the Adrian player made an excellent deke to put the winning goal in.

After Friday's game I think we felt resolved as a team to really try to put Adrian away the next day. On Saturday we woke up and had some breakfast down in the lobby of the hotel. We spent some of the morning completing our fundraiser mailings and had some down time to try to catch up on some of the homework that we missed on Thursday and Friday. Our warm-ups went well on Saturday. We did a new type of partner stretching off-ice which really seemed to relieve some of the soreness from the previous day's game.

The game began with a similar first period as Friday's game. The score was 1-0 going into the second period and we knew what we had to do for the remainder of the game to make sure the outcome was different from Friday night. We capitalized more on our power plays and ended up scoring a goal per period and thus winning 3-0. It was nice to get the win under our belt after such a tough season-opening loss. I think it really helps to know that we can bounce back and learn from our mistakes in the same weekend.

Highlights of the trip definitely weren't only limited to the games. While at Adrian, we ran into some Gustie alumni who lived in Adrian and came to each of the games to cheer us on. None of us knew or had ever met this older couple and it was really nice to see Gustavus alumni coming out to support us when we least expected it. The couple was really complementary of our team and even brought us a cake to enjoy after Friday night's game. We also sang the Gustie rouser with them on Saturday following the series, which they seemed to appreciate and enjoy.

The long bus trip was also a chance for the team to become better accquainted with one another. I definitely enjoyed getting to know some of the new members of the team and found many of their personalities to be really funny and genuine. As a team, we spent a lot of down time playing our new favorite game Apples to Apples. I have a feeling this game will remain a team favorite for the remainder of this season as we shared many many laughs over it.

The tough part about the trip was obviously the long ride. It was somewhat hard sleeping on the way home through the night, but we were lucky because we got home a few hours earlier than was expected. I think many of us were thankful for that as it provided us with a few hours of extra sleep in our own beds. Sunday was tough to get back into "school" mode. I found it particularily hard to sit down and do homework without feeling the need for a nap. However, it was important to get back into homework as soon as possible.

Overall, I can say that our first series bus trip went well. We would have liked to have pulled off two wins, but I think that we benefitted more from the overall experience. We definitely have a lot to work on throughout the week as we prepare for our first conference series against St. Mary's this weekend. Tonight I am getting ahead on my school work with hopes that I can put a lot of effort into practice this week.

We started off for Adrian this morning. We play our first series against them in Michigan this weekend and after three weeks of practice, I guess you could say we are pretty excited. Because of our day of busing, the practice schedule this week was a little bit different than usual. We had a rough practice on Monday; nothing was clicking. Tuesday, however, was quite a bit better--people's heads seemed more plugged in and our legs were really moving. On Wednesday we didn't have practice in order to catch up with school work. That was a nice break that I think many players appreciated and needed.

We woke up really early today to load the bus. The caf even opened extra early for us so we could get breakfast before we left. Lots of us had to-go boxes that we just ate after we loaded everything up. Most of us napped for a good majority of the morning bus ride. We stopped in Wisconsin Dells for lunch and had some sub sandwiches. We also got a good leg stretch and got to walk around a little which felt great. We had practice in Milwaukee that same afternoon. Though many people thought it took a while to get their legs going after the bus, practice went well. We worked on breakouts and some special teams.

The remainder of the bus ride seemed to take the longest. I think we got stuck in Chicago rush hour traffic and that took some big time out of our ride. We had a quick supper at Chipotle and got awfully full. Those burritos are just massive and wonderfully delicious. 

We arrived at the hotel around midnight. It was a relief to sit down in my bed and stretch out after trying to bus sleep. It will be a little hard to sleep tonght just because of all the rest on the bus and the excitement that is built up with the first game of the season. I am so excited for the game tomorrow. I am sure everyones nerves will be going a little crazy, but hopefully that just makes us play that much better. I think we are definitely prepared. With that I've got to sign off and try to get some sleep. 

This morning was another early morning for us. The bus left at an early 7:45 after a busy and much anticipated Halloween weekend. It was also my 22nd birthday on Saturday so it pretty much seemed like the festivities never ended for me. Needless so say I didn't want to wake up on Sunday morning for practice because I definitely wore myself down with Halloween, birthday fun, and a trip up to the Twin Cities to watch the Gustie Football players take on Bethel (They won!). Even though I didn't want to wake up, I still had a tough time sleeping because I kept thinking I wouldn't hear my alarm and oversleep. It was one of those nights where I would wake up about every hour because my mind is so worried about missing the bus to go to practice. Most of my teammates said they had similar problems like this and some were even more confused because of the daylight savings time change.

Anyway, we all made the bus and I was thankful for that. Unfortunately it was another sunday skate which meant that quite a bit of practice was conditioning. I realized today that after practice you think "wow, that skating wasn't so bad" but while it is actually going on all you can think about is "I don't think my legs will go any longer." It's funny how that works. Today was an especially lucky day because our usual locker room was now occupied by a high school team so we had to cram into a smaller locker room and all get ready for the ice time in very close-quarters. I am pretty sure I couldn't see a speck of floor becuase there wasn't enough bench space and people were just getting ready in the middle. It was actually kind of fun to have us all tight in one room. It gave us a change to see how we functioned all together in the morning when everyone's personal bubbles were being broken.

We had weights like usual back on-campus following on-ice practice. I had one of those days that at some point during lifting I got really exhausted. My body just didn't want to go anymore or something and it probably didn't help that I only had a granola bar for breakfast. Practice should mellow some this week in terms of intensity. I know our coach thinks we are possibly still out of shape but I think we should be ready for this weekend. 

I will have a really busy week especially because of the increased homework load. It feels like professors sometimes conspire against you so that every major project for each of your classes is due in the same week. That is what this week feels like for me so I will be working on a lot of homework and papers these next few days. On top of that, I have my first "real" job interview tomorrow, which will take up a good majority of the day. I don't really like the idea of needing to prepare for the real world with all this interivew and job search stuff, but I guess it must be done.