Despite Rochester Mayo on its mind, the Austin High School girls hockey team stormed through Section 1 opponent Northfield, 7-0, Friday night.

Sunday, February 11, 2001

Despite Rochester Mayo on its mind, the Austin High School girls hockey team stormed through Section 1 opponent Northfield, 7-0, Friday night.

"We were looking at Mayo," Packers’ head coach Denny Bray admitted. "We set our practices for Mayo, nothing against Northfield. We’re ready for Mayo."

With the victory, fifth-seeded AHS moved on to meet fourth-seeded Mayo Saturday afternoon at the recreational center in Rochester.

"I think we’re going to be OK," Bray said. "We’re going to play at the rec center. We have that jinx at Graham (arena). Maybe that storm was good for us."

Everything appeared to be good for the Packers Friday night

Without factoring in AHS’ seven goals, the Raiders had little offense to mount much of an attack or counter the Packers hard-charging lines. Northfield made five shots on goal all night while AHS fired 41 at the nets. It was the most goals the Packers scored all year and the least shots on goal Austin gave up.

"Bottom line, look at the shots," said Northfield head coach Brent Bielenberg. "We need to get better skilled individuals. We’ve got good kids.

"They probably have six skilled kids. We don’t have anyone like that."

AHS improved to 17-5 on the season and Northfield ended the year at 3-20.

The direction of the game was evident early. Rhianna Jacobs narrowly missed on a deflection :51 into the game. At 2:05, Sara DeVries was close enough with a shot that the goalie fell on it to cover it up.

Soon afterwards, Brenda Nguyen backhanded a shot that trickled through Northfield goalie Maegen Trebelhorn’s pads and into the net for a 1-0 Packer’s lead at the 2:43 mark. DeVries and Kati Radford-Garcia got the assists.

The Raiders quickly turned defensive and concentrated more on protecting their end than assaulting AHS’ end. Meanwhile, the Packers kept on firing.

Jacobs shot high on the goaltender at 6:32 and the puck slid down Trebelhorn’s uniform to her skate and she nervously pushed it across the mouth of the goal. Fortunately for the Raiders, AHS had no one on the other side of the crease.

The Packers’ aggressive offense paid dividends at 9:44 when Courtney Hughes skated straight in from the side and fired a left hander high past the beaten Trebelhorn. Senior Bobee Jo Lang, playing her last high school game at Riverside, got the assist and AHS led 2-0.

The Packers had easy pickin’s on its third goal when Jessica Petersen skated across the goal mouth and backhanded to Hughes who had no problem scoring on the open side of the net. At 12:24, AHS led 3-0 and the half ended that way. The Packers out-shot the Raiders 19-3 in the opening period.

AHS fired 13 shots on goal in the second period to only one by Northfield, but the Packers got only one goal. At 12:15, Melissa Dickhut stole the puck near the blue line and rushed the Raiders’ net to score with a slap shot.

A quiet start to the third period soon was a deluge of scoring. At 6:08, Jacobs was in the right position and fired a clean shot past an unsuspecting Trebelhorn.

Before the teams changed lines, AHS scored again :16 later. Lisa Snyder got the quickie with an assist from Dickhut. The Packers led 6-0 to send the game into running time.

At 8:28, Jacobs set up from behind the net and poked the puck to a well-positioned Jacobs home for her first varsity hat trick.

"She was our sniper tonight," Bray said.