The playoffs are getting underway and that means the votes are starting to roll in on the End of the Year Awards.  The big individual award for Girls’ High School hockey is the “Miss Wisconsin Hockey” award, which is presented at the Annual Banquet held in Madison during the WIAA State Hockey Tournament. 

However, there are three awards which are presented a half hour after the second girls semi-final game at Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum.  These awards recognize the Player of the Year in three categories and are named after three players which have represented Women’s hockey extremely well. 

This will be the third year for the Jessie Vetter Award – Goaltender of the Year.  The last two seasons saw Hillary Drake of the Central Wisconsin Storm accept the award.  We know there will be a new winner this year with Hillary Drake having taken her skills and educational opportunities to Providence. 

Last season, two new awards were presented:  the Jinelle Siergiej Award – Offensive Player of the Year and the Molly Engstrom Award – Defensive Player of the Year.  Alice Cranston won the Jinelle Siergiej Award last year and is now playing at UW- River Falls.  Josie Johnson won the Molly Engstrom Award (along with having been named Miss Wisconsin Hockey the night before) and is now on the roster at North Dakota.

The WIAA Girls’ head coaches were asked to nominate one player from their team for the Molly Engstrom Award and that list will be sent out to all the coaches to vote for their top five and return in that order.

There was a list of players sent to each of the WIAA Girls’ head coaches were sent a list of players for the Jinelle Siergiej and the Jessie Vetter Awards.  Once again, the coaches were asked to vote for their top five and return the votes in order of preference.  This will be the only voting done on the awards.

The coaches are given very few instructions on how to place their votes.  Besides being asked to choose their top five in order of preference, the following is their only instruction:

“We trust the coaches will vote for the players they feel are the best representative for these awards.  Therefore, I have never place a restriction on coaches being unable to vote for their own player.  If a coach believes their player is the best candidate for the award, he/she should feel comfortable voting in that regard.”

As with any award, there are players whose contributions appear to be overlooked.  How do you judge a player?  Do you just look at the total points of a player to say they’re the best offensive player or do you dig deeper than looking at points?  With a goalie, is it save percentage or goals against average?  Do you take into account their strength of schedule?  Each coach has their ideas as to what makes each player the best and the decision is theirs’ to make without anyone telling them how to make it.

Once the votes are received and tabulated, the coaches will be sent a list of the top ten and that list will be posted on the website.  While everyone is welcome to come and watch the award presentation, we ask that the top ten try and be there.  There will not be any announcement as to who the winners are until the presentation on Friday, March 3^rd, at Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum in Madison.

We congratulate all of the players and coaches on the 2011-12 hockey season and look forward to seeing as many coaches and players as possible at the State Tournament in Madison.  Please stop by the Wisconsin Prep Hockey suite and say hello as we are more than happy to meet and talk.