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Speedy USM chews up Warbirds

By The Fond du Lac Reporter, 12/22/12, 9:15PM CST

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The Fond du Lac co-op girls hockey team had been competitive in its first six games of the season. Even in the Warbirds‘ first two losses, they made the opponent sweat.

Things were different on Saturday afternoon at the Blue Line Ice Center, where University School of Milwaukee beat the Warbirds 7-1 in an Eastern Shores Conference game.

“Hopefully we learn from it,” Fond du Lac coach Duane Woeshnick said. “I don’t want to lose 7-1 ever again. If we had seen more effort from the team I think it would have been a different outcome.”

While USM’s speed overwhelmed the Warbirds (3-3-1, 2-2) in the second and third periods, Woeshnick said he was surprised by Saturday’s result.

“It was one of our worst games of the year. This is definitely not the team I coach day after day after day,” he said. “If we played with the same intensity against Appleton or Bay Area it would have been a much closer game.”

It was close for the first 27 minutes of the contest. The game remained scoreless until the 10:19 mark of the second period when a centering pass to Rachel Lowe opened the floodgates with a point-blank shot. Rose Revolinski went top shelf 30 seconds later, Caitlin McBride kept her balance after being spun by two defensemen to make it 3-0 before Nina Andersen scored from her knees with 1:11 left in the Warbirds’ ugly period.

Revolinski scored twice more in the third period to complete her hat trick. In total, the Wildcats (4-4, 2-1) put 26 shots on Fond du Lac goalie Taryn Immel in the first two periods and 13 on Jade Van Buren, who played the third period.

Fond du Lac prevented the shutout with 5:58 left in the third period. There was a scramble for the puck in front of the crease and Jennica Hefter poked it past USM’s backup goalie to make it 6-1 at that point.

“I tried mixing up the lines to try to generate some more offense,” Woeshnick said. “We happened to score a goal so hopefully we can build on that for the holiday tournament.”