The Central Wisconsin Storm have played in every WIAA state tournament since 2009 but the last few years have brought changes to section 2. As skater numbers have dwindled teams have consolidated, and that has brought new teams to the section. Last year it was the Bay Area Ice Bears, and this year it was the Fox Cities Stars. The same Fox Cities Stars that won the 2019 State Championship.

Something had to give.

The high powered offense of the Stars proved to be to much for the Storm to handle Friday night in the section 2 final, and the Stars took a 6-2 win.

The two teams played a 6-5 overtime game just 13 days ago, and the gamesmanship started early as coach Pete Susens started freshman Chloe Lemke in net for the Storm. Lemke played just 146 minutes during the regular season for the Storm, and only one period in their two previous playoff games.

Her counterpart tonight was another freshman, Ella Sciborski, who got the lion's share of the Stars' minutes this season.

Both teams came out fast, with a lot of end-to-end play through the first few minutes. Sophomore defenseman Gwen Gillard opened the scoring for the Stars with a nice wrister through traffic at the 4:04 mark.

That was it for the first period. Both teams took 8 shots.

Fox Cities opened it up with a goal early in the second. At the 2:35 mark senior Madelynn Jablonski deflected a shot by senior Hanna Hiltunen past Lemke to make it 2-0.

Sophomore Emma Webster would make it 3-0 at the 10:55 mark. She took a feed from Jablonski and fired a shot off Lemke's shoulder. It bounced up and over for a goal.

The Storm would get one back just 12 seconds into a power play. Junior Audrey Ladewig fired a bad angle shot on goal and senior Eden Gruber cleaned up the rebound to make it 3-1.

Lemke stopped 6 shots in the period, and Sciborski stopped 3.

The Stars would add to their lead in the third period with goals by Sophomore McKayla Zilisch, and another by Gillard, before the Storm got one back off the stick of senior Challis Prohoska.

Zilisch would add an empty netter for the Stars to make it 6-2. Sciborski stopped 16 shots in the win, and Lemke stopped 21 in the loss.

The Stars are making second consecutive trip to the tournament, this time representing section 2 instead of section 4.