The Austin girls hockey team opened with a blast and it never slowed down as it upended Albert Lea (0-1 overall, 0-1 Big Nine) 9-0 in Riverside Arena Thursday.

Austin’s Chloe Summerfield stole the puck and scored a breakaway goal with less than a minute into the game and she finished the night with four goals and three assists as the Packers (2-0-1 overall, 1-0-1 Big Nine) cruised to the win.

“We came into this game really pumped up against our rival,” Summerfield said. “The first period set the tone for the whole game. We’ve been skating pretty good and passing the puck a lot.”

The Packers held a 2-0 lead after the first period, but they really put their foot on the gas in the second period when they tallied seven goals over a nine-minute stretch to put the game out of reach. The third period saw Austin take just three shots as the Packers slowed it down with run-time in effect.

Myia Hoium scored two goals for Austin and Madison Overby, Claire Olson and Mackenzie Trimble each scored one goal.

“You can tell that our girls worked in the offseason. They worked really hard and it’s starting to pay off right now,” Austin head coach Brett Vesel said. “I think last year we played a little tentative because we didn’t want to get scored on sometimes. Now we understand that we can get back on defense and we can still go hard on offense. The intensity was really good.”

As the Austin offense was creating scoring opportunities left and right, Mara Overby was dominating in the net. The junior goalie finished with 25 saves to pick up the shutout.

Austin has now had two straight shutouts as Allison Hoban had a shutout in a 4-0 win over Waseca Tuesday.

“We definitely push each other. Both of us want the starts and it’s good to have competition in practice. We’re about even,” Overby said. “We definitely worked a lot this summer and we’re happy to see the progress that we’ve made from last season.”

Vesel said both of his goalies, who have each played varsity hockey since they were seventh graders, give him solid options in the net.

“They’re both playing well so far. We had back-to-back shutouts and we didn’t do that last year,” Vesel said.

SCORING SUMMARY

AL 0 0 0 — 0

Austin 2 7 0 — 9

First period

(A) Chloe Summerfield :47

(A) Myia Hoium (power play) 6:57

Second period

(A) Summerfield (Madison Overby) 2:50

(A) Summerfield (Overby) 3:35

(A) Overby (Summerfield) 5:39

(A) Claire Olson (Summerfield) 9:27

(A) Mackenzie Trimble (Isabelle Reuter) 10:39

(A) Summerfield (Hoium) 12:00

(A) Hoium (Summerfield) 13:15

Third period

No scoring

Shots: Austin — 30; AL — 25

Power plays: Austin — 1-for-1; AL — 0-for-1