As recently as four years ago, the late season match-up between Wausau West and Wisconsin Rapids would more often than not decide the winner of the Wisconsin Valley Conference.
Rapids won four titles between 2001-2002 and 2004-2005 and with tonight's victory, West has grabbed the last four WVC championships.
The highlight of this year's contest was the introduction on Senior Night of the three Rapids seniors--Lucas Lamb, Joe Steinhilber, and Booker Berry. Once the puck was dropped to begin the game, it was advantage West as the second-ranked team took a 7-0 victory from host Rapids Thursday evening at the South Wood County Rec Center.
West coach Pete Susens earned his 512th win--which ties him with legendary ex-Madison Memorial coach Vic Levine for most wins in Wisconsin high school history.
West outshot Rapids 15-3 in the first period and took a 2-0 lead into the locker room.
After a Rapids penalty at 8:52 of the first, West took 43 seconds to score on the power play. Garret Clemment grabbed a loose puck in the neutral zone, motored into the high slot are and ripped a shot that squirted between Rapids goalie Cole Paulsen's pads to make it 1-0 on the unassisted goal.
Late in the period, the Warriors scored again on the power play. John Feemster snapped off a shot from the right circle that glanced off Paulsen's right pad and into the net, with assists going to Ryan Condon and Clemment.
The second period would be all West as they tallied five goals and sent the game into "run-time" with just over six minutes left in the period.
At 5:04, Tanner Blaschka rammed home a rebound of a Alex Halbrook shot.
Then the guests struck thrice in a span of 67 seconds to put the game out of reach.
Cody Hahner scored from the right side on a pass from Clemment that had the goalie out of position at 9:34 of the period.
49 seconds later, Feemster scored his second goal when he took a pass from Tom Kilgore and ripped a shot from the top of the left circle at 10:23. Brad Peterson also had an assist.
Then at 10:51, Tanner Gould scored from the slot on assists from Matt Bautch and Peterson to make it 6-0.
West added the final score just under two minutes later with a Kilgore score on a deflection, with an assist to Peterson, who completed his playmaker at 12:41.
The Warriors held a 15-3 shot edge in the period.
As the teams came out for third period, goalie Wilson Fowle took over in net for West.
As expected, the third period was fairly quiet with one penalty on Rapids and no scoring as the third and fourth lines got the majority of the ice time in the stanza.
West had a 7-2 shot margin in the scoreless period.
Austin Priebe (6) and Fowle (2) combined for eight West saves, while Paulsen stopped 30 shots for Rapids.
Susens will go for the record-breaking win Saturday as his Warriors face host Madison Edgewood at Madison Ice Arena, which ironically, is the site of many of Levine's victories.
