On cold January evening, USM made the trek from Milwaukee to Sun Prairie for a match-up between two top ten teams in the state.  Over the last two seasons, the teams have met in one regular season game and the Sectional 4 finals each season.  The Cougars had won 3 of the 4 games (the one loss two years ago in the sectional finals), but this was the first time the teams met in Sun Prairie.

The respect the coaches have for each other was evident, when WiPH was able to talk to both of them prior to the game.  That respect trickles down to the teams, they know each other and that left out the “feeling out” process to start the game.

Once the puck was dropped, both teams started to apply pressure from both an offensive and defensive aspect.  The Cougars were called for a body checking penalty with 10:17 remaining in the first period.  The Wildcats were unable to capitalize on the power play opportunity.  USM was called for cross-checking at the 9:26 mark of the first.  Sun Prairie took advantage of the opportunity, Alexis Peterson found Jamie Henderson behind the goalline.  Henderson skated behind the net and stuffed a wrap-around under the Wildcats’ Heidi Golembiewski with 34 seconds remaining on the power play.  The Wildcats answered back with 41 seconds remaining in the period as Megan Bailey rifled a shot past Dani Deltgen with Rose Revolinski and Nina Anderson being credited with assists on the play.  End of the first period, game tied at 1.

The second period saw the Wildcats have to kill off back-to-back penalties.  The first penalty came 4:10 into the period.  After successfully killing off that penalty, USM was called for another 13 seconds later.  Once again the Wildcats killed off the penalty and kept the game tied at 1.  The Cougars were called for a body checking penalty with 6:45 left in the second.  This time the Wildcats took advantage as they capitalized 26 seconds into the power play.  Once again, the trio of Megan Bailey (with the goal) and Nina Anderson and Rose Revolinski assisting on the play gave the Wildcats their first lead of the night.  The period came to an end with USM leading 2-1.

USM increased their lead to two, when Liz Curley scored at 10:44 of the third with an assist from Laine Tomesch.  Nineteen seconds later, the Wildcats were called for another penalty.  The Cougars used the power play opportunity to cut the lead to one, when Alexis Peterson took a shot from the right side that found the back of the net.  Jamie Henderson and Amber Deltgen assisted on the goal with 4:53 remaining in the game.  USM brought their lead back to two at the 13:18 mark of the third, as Laine Tomesch scored the final goal with an assist from Abby Wigdale.  USM improved to 11-2-0 with the 4-2 victory, while Sun Prairie fell to 8-6-1.

After the game, WiPH met with the two coaches.  First we met with Jason Woods, head coach of USM:

WiPH:  Coach, once again it was a hard fought close game with the Cougars.  Nice victory 4-2 over one of the top ten teams in the state.  Even with a two goal score, I’m not sure it represents how close the game really was.

Coach Woods:  This is nothing new.  Seems it always a 1 or 2 goal game against Sun Prairie.  It’s seems one time they’ll end up on top and one time we’ll end up with the win.  This is the first time we have played them in their rink.  It is such a nice advantage for them, because the rink is so different than what we are used to.  I thought we really struggled in the first period, played great in the second and were on the penalty kill for three quarters of the third.

WiPH:  Your goalie, Heidi Golembiewski, did not play hockey last year due to not having a place to play.  This season, with the co-op, she has a home.  How big of an asset has she been to your team this year?

Coach Woods:  She probably, in the eight years of coaching boys and girls high school hockey, the most amazing story I have had as a coach.  She has come so far, so fast.  You have to give credit to our goaltending coach, Maurie Daigneau.  She is a special story that no one knows, but should.  How often do you get a kid that has never played hockey, but comes to the sport as a sophomore and does what she has done and is capable of.  It’s pretty impressive stuff.

WiPH:  Let’s talk about you offense a little bit.  Megan Bailey, I am not sure how many people in the state understand how special and how hard she works on the ice.  Not just skating with the puck, but away from the puck.

Coach Woods:  That’s just it.  She stands out for us, she plays a different style.  We are a team that takes it deep and grinds it out, but Megan plays it different.  She reads the play, anticipates what others are going to do and makes special plays.  If she gets within ten feet of the net, you don’t want to let her shoot, because she’s going to find the back of the net.  She has never received the recognition, because we are a team first team.  We’re not going to score a ton of goals.  She has done everything you could ask.  She has come back this year as a better and more complete player than she was in the last three.

WiPH:  Let’s discuss your defense.  Two players that stood out to me tonight were Margot Peterson and Billie Fritz.  They did a terrific job anticipating where the puck was going and applying pressure, especially pressuring Jamie Henderson, when she was skating behind the net.

Coach Woods:  Yes.  First off, hats off to Henderson.  She is extremely tough, played a lot of minutes, never waivered and a very impressive kid.  We have some heart and soul back there on defense.  Billie Fritz has such a long reach that she uses to poke away the puck.  Margot is a special story.  She has played forward for the last three years and this year we are asking her to play defense.  She has accepted the challenge and is definitely an all-state player.  She is so smooth with the puck, makes plays and is aggressive.  Number 4 Jessica Gold, too those two along with Billie have been our rocks on defense this year.  They allowed us to move Laine Tomesch to forward.  Laine flies around the corners.  Without those three players, we would not have been able to move her there as she had played defense for the last two years.

Then we spoke with the Sun Prairie Cougars Head Coach, Michael Johnson.

WiPH:  Coach, you knew it was going to be a tough game.  Every time you play it seems to be a close game and tonight was no exception.

Coach Johnson:  It always a good challenge and we always enjoy playing U School.  We’ve had a pretty good rivalry over the last two years, trading wins in the sectional finals. It’s always fun to play a team that Jason coaches.  Similar styles, we try to use our speed, they try to use theirs and try to neutralize each other.  We gave them too many opportunities tonight and we will try to work on that.  They have a lot of fire power and their team is probably the fastest team we’ve seen all year.

WiPH:  I think a lot of people expected you to be in a little bit of a rebuilding mode.  You had to replace Josie, who was a threat to take the puck from one end of the ice to the other on any play.  Then you lost Janna Bielke-Skoug (to graduation), who seemed like she was able to stop almost everything that came at her.  Are you ahead of where you expected to be at this point of the season?

Coach Johnson:  We’re actually about where I expected.  I saw on paper, where I saw some young players being able to step into some key roles.  They picked things up quickly and everything goes our bounced our way we could have 1 to 3 losses at this point.  On the other hand, we could have been below .500 as well.  We’re right about the middle of that.  Our losses have been to teams that have been in the top ten or are in the top ten still.  I believe Northland Pines is the one exception and they beat us 2-1.  Also, I believe our jobs, as coaches, is to get as competitive of schedules as we can and we’ve been successful in doing that.  We’re comfortable as to where we are.  We were just talking about that, the first step is to be able to compete and we’re doing that well.  The next step is to learn how to win and that is what we’re trying to do.  We lost another one to the Fusion, this one and the Minnesota trip.  We think we’re headed in a good direction.

With the new alignment in Girls Sectional playoffs, if these two teams meet again this season there will be a little more at stake as it would be in Madison during the State Tournament for the Championship.