Hours before the first official practice day of the 2014-15 season, I got a text from the mom of a Team Wisconsin player. This mom is not only an advocate of her daughter and her team, but a huge proponent in general for girls hockey in the state.

She knows many of the players and teams and follows them in a pretty close fashion.

Yet when she proclaimed that 'USM is going wire-to-wire, you can give them the gold trophy right now,' I scoffed.

If you look up 'scoff' in the the dictionary, you will see that one of the definitions is: to express doubt.

Which I did, seeing that Bay Area still looked pretty solid with Courtney Wittig on the front end and the Niemi sisters and Lindsey Strainis in net on the back end.

Plus they are reigning state champs.

The Ice Bears are off to a 6-0 start and hold the top spot in the latest WiPH Top Ten poll. But right behind is USM, and methinks they are coming.

I got a chance to see them play at the Uihlein Ice Arena in River Hills on the USM campus. (Anyone outside of USM and the Milwaukee area that can properly pronounce Uihlein wins a cookie.)

They were taking on 7-0 Waupaca, a formidable scoring team themselves, in Friday night's WiPH Game of the Week.

The Wildcats forechecked tenaciously, not allowing Waupaca a lot of 'easy outs' from the d-zone. State scoring leaders Markie Ash and Mandy Tomlinson were shut down and held pointless, a rare occasion for this duo on an up-and-coming team.

The result was a 7-0 win, with the 'Nine Line' of Nina Andersen, Nicole Unsworth, and Rose Revolinski combining for five goals and five assists, doing most of the heavy lifting that night at USM.

The 'Cats have won four in a row since their late November 3-2 loss to Bay Area, and have outscored their foes 42-1 in that stretch.

It is true, Arrowhead and Brookfield are rebuilding, not as strong as they once were. But Waupaca has lots of scoring punch and the Icebergs have two-time Jessie Vetter award winner Kenzie Torpy in net, so those two games were truer barometers that track the strength of this Wildcat bunch.

And they beat them by a combined 15-0.

The 'Cats are on the prowl, and the rest of the state better beware.

USM has nine seniors--including the aforementioned Andersen and Revolinski--to provide plenty of leadership.

But the true strength of this team might be the experience that the younger players have been gaining as this season progresses into the Christmas season.

There are ten underclassmen, and quite a few of them are already contributing, including sophomores Unsworth and goalie Liz Ostermeyer. 

Unsworth only led the state in scoring last year with 107 points (63g-44a), and that was as a freshman.

Ostermeyer has three straight shutouts and is starting to play with the confidence that head coach Jason Woods hoped she would show from the get-go.

While standing on the USM bench taking pictures and notes during Friday night's game, I got both the impression of seriousness (assistant coach Megan Bailey diagramming a play for the forwards) and of players enjoying their time on the bench (freshman goalie Taylor Yelton showing me her catching glove that needed a desperate re-lacing job).

Yeah, it was in the late stages of the 7-0 win, but I heard this banter and coaching from the opening puck drop.

This team is ready to rock-n-roll and when it happens, girls, look out.

Here come the 'Cats!