Women’s Hockey to Play UMass-Boston in NCAA

The Middlebury women’s hockey team won the NESCAC Championship on Sunday, March 6 for the eighth time in the program’s history with a 5-4 overtime victory against Amherst in Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena. Sunday’s game was the sixth time in the tournament’s history — the first NESCAC championship was in 2002 — that the title game has gone to overtime, and Middlebury has played in five of those six games.

It was a team win and we were all so happy after the game,” said Maddie Winslow ’18, the heroine of both games. “No one on our team had ever won a NESCAC championship before so it was a cool experience to have it be everyone’s collective first win.”

The Panthers advanced to the finals after defeating Trinity 3-1 in the semifinals on Saturday. The beginning of the first period was heated, with close scoring attempts coming from both teams. Trinity nearly secured an early lead two minutes into the game, but the puck sailed just over the crossbar. The Panthers went on the power play at 14:18 in the first, but none of their three shots on goal made it past Bantam goalie Sydney Belinskas. Minutes later, Trinity went on their own power play and managed to make something of it. With 12 seconds left in the period, Emma Tani gathered the puck, weaved her way through the Panther defense and placed a high shot past Julia Neuburger ’18 to give the Bantams a 1-0 lead.

Midway through the second period, the Panthers mustered an answer. Off a feed from Julia Wardwell ’16, Jenna Marotta ’19 drilled a shot at 8:57 from the right point into the back of the net. The goal came on the power play and was Marotta’s first in her collegiate career.

“Jenna scored her first goal of the season on an unreal shot to tie it up,” Winslow said. “You couldn’t pick a better time to get your first goal.”

Trinity made an attempt to break the 1-1 deadlock on a rush up the right side. Shannon Farrell skated along the boards before passing it to her teammate Kate Fraley, who one-timed it, but Neuburger swept it away to keep the score tied.

Middlebury went on the power play in the closing minutes of the second period, and Winslow scored her team-leading 16th goal of the season with another assist by Wardwell. In response, Trinity upped the pressure in the third period, with two attackers each taking close-range shots. Neuburger stopped both shots, but the Bantams nearly scored on the rebounds as well before the Panthers ended the danger.

Trinity called a timeout with 53 seconds remaining and pulled its goalie in favor of an extra attacker. At the faceoff, the Panthers diverted the puck out of reach of the Bantams until Jessica Young added an insurance goal on an empty net. The game, an even 22-22 matchup in shots on goal, ended with a score of 3-1 and sent Middlebury to the finals on Sunday.

The battle for the trophy between the Panthers and Amherst ended in overtime, when Winslow scored to secure a hard-fought 5-4 win. The Panthers came out with a 3-0 lead, but by the middle of the second period Amherst had upended that score with four goals in a row, making it 4-3.

“The NESCAC finals is the kind of championship game every hockey player dreams of playing in,” Winslow said.

The Panthers came out with an early lead 40 seconds into the game when Alternate Captain Katie Mandigo ’16 redirected a pass from Wardwell through the legs of Amherst goalie Sabrina Dobbins. They doubled their lead at 3:01 with a goal from the slot by Young, assisted by Winslow.

Amherst pushed back during a power play after Middlebury’s second goal, and with eight minutes left in the first the Purple & White had two quality chances that Neuburger stopped. Mandigo responded less than a minute later with a one-timed shot off a pass from Shanna Hickman ’19 in the slot that blasted past the Amherst goalie.

But the tempo of the game began to change with 3:02 left in the period, when Amherst’s Sara Culhane won a battle for the puck behind the net and scored a backhanded goal on the wrap around. Amherst then surged in the second period, scoring three straight goals to take a 4-3 lead. The first goal, a wrister that sailed through traffic and over Neuburger’s shoulder, came 6:36 into the period. The next came two minutes later when Katie Savage collected her own rebound and fed the puck out to the right circle, where Katelyn Pantera launched it netward to tie the game 3-3. Amherst took the lead at 12:59 as Culhane placed a shot that Neuburger made an attempt to block but deflected in.

Down but not out, Middlebury tied the game again with a goal by Janka Hlinka ’18, who corrected a shot by Audrey Quirk ’18 into the net. The Panthers came up empty on a power play at 14:18. Amherst came inches away from winning the game in the final 25 seconds of regulation, when a charging attacker rebounded the puck against the left post. The puck stopped short, forcing overtime.

Middlebury had another power play early on in the overtime period, but Amherst killed it off and responded with a 2-on-1 rush toward Neuburger, who blocked the shot.

Young started the deciding play in overtime for the hosts, collecting her own rebound off a blocked shot and sliding a centering pass to Winslow. Winslow, at the right circle, one-timed the puck into the goal for her team-leading 17th of the winter — this time a championship-winning goal.

“Scoring the overtime winner was definitely one of the best moments in my hockey career,” Winslow said. “My line mate Jess Young fed me a beautiful pass, and I was able to one time it top corner.”

Winslow scored the game winner in both of Middlebury’s final and semifinal games. She now leads the NESCAC in assists, with 23, and points, with 40. Winslow finished the tournament with four goals and five assists, setting a new championship record of nine points over all three rounds.

With the win, sixth-ranked Middlebury, ending the season with a 20-4-3 record, earned the conference’s automatic bid to the 2016 NCAA Division III tournament. Middlebury will host University of Massachusetts Boston (16-12-0), on Saturday, March 12. Amherst received an at-large bid to the tournament and will face Plattsburgh State, to whom Middlebury lost 3-0 in January. The winner of that matchup will go on to face either Middlebury or UMass Boston on March 18.