APPLETON – The Fox Cities Stars girls hockey team is ready to defend its back-to-back WIAA state championships and embark on a new campaign starting Friday night at home against University School of Milwaukee.

The girls hockey co-op welcomes 14 freshmen and a host of new starters for the 2020-21 season after graduating 10 seniors last spring. Two mainstays from the 2019-20 state tournament team remain – junior forward McKayla Zilisch and junior defenseman Gwen Gillard.

In 2019, Fox Cities beat Hudson 6-5 in a double-overtime thriller to secure its first state title. In 2020, it beat Middleton co-op 5-3 to make it back-to-back championships.

Replacing the experience and production from last year's state championship team will be one of the biggest challenges to overcome this year, but it's not too dissimilar to most years, Stars coach Jeff Fox says.

"It's something that every coach goes through. We have a very talented freshman group and we have a lot of them, so it will be a learning curve," Fox said.

With almost an entirely new roster, the Stars' success feels a little less certain than in years past. Despite that, Fox insists the goals haven't changed.

"Expectations are the same," Fox said. "We've established a program. We've got girls coming in that are hungry. We've lost some talented players, but we still have some talented players left on our team."

Preparation for the 2020-21 season has been slightly different because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Fox says the Stars haven't been able to practice or meet as much as they normally would, and that's put them behind as a younger team.

"This is a tough year for having all this COVID stuff because of the fact that it's such a young team and you wish you'd have been together more and been able to meet more than we have," Fox said. "Once we've gone on the ice they've been real good and they're learning, but we're throwing a lot at them real fast."

Zilisch and Gillard noted some of the other changes brought about in response to the pandemic.

"I think there's a lot more concentration on making sure we're all conditioned with the masks," Zilisch said. "As a team, we're still doing the same preparation as we do all the other years and we're really excited to get going and start playing some games."

Added Gillard: "A lot more off-ice stuff since we can't practice as much and our season is shortened. We need to be ready to go. A lot of the off-ice training and weightlifting has been a lot more important."

With the team's inexperience and limited offseason activity, Gillard expects there to be growing pains. Despite those challenges, she thinks the Stars will push through and ultimately be successful this year.

"We have a really young team, but the freshmen coming up, they're good, so it's like a good step to replace the seniors a little bit," Gillard said. "It will definitely be difficult, but I think we'll be good."

Zilisch added that she and her teammates are ready to play and excited to see how they stack up with the competition.

"We'll just have to wait, see what happens," Zilisch said. "We're all here, we're all ready to compete, so it's just a matter of time to see how the other teams compare to us."

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