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St. Mary's Springs Survives; Advances to Sectional Final

By Michael Rogers, Fond du Lac Reporter, 02/23/11, 8:26AM CST

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Springs to Face Cedarburg Saturday at 3 pm in Sectional Final

 

 The St. Mary's Springs hockey team has a trio of lethal goal scoring forwards. But the most important goal of the season, to date, came while they were watching from the bench.

Instead, a senior defenseman, who hadn't scored since November, was ready when the chance came to give the Ledgers a 5-4 overtime win on Tuesday at the Blue Line Ice Center, and a spot in a sectional final.
 
Springs (21-4) plays Cedarburg (14-10-2) on Saturday afternoon at the Blue Line with a trip to State on the line.
 
"There was some relief, but its more elation than anything else," Springs coach Ty Steffes said. "It's fantastic. We've worked hard all year, playing solid, playing like a team."
 
With 12 seconds left on a power play and 3 minutes left in overtime Mike Mathweg took a high shot from the right corner. Senior David Schmitz was waiting at the backdoor as the goalie couldn't hold on.
 
"It was unbelievable," Schmitz said. "That was my second goal of the year, and it was the first time working with that power play, so it was just weird out there at first. But then Mike took that shot from the corner; goalie had it pinned against his shoulder, and it just dropped and I slammed it home right away."
 
"I saw it start wiggling so I just started scratching in there, and sure enough it dropped, and I was right there."
 
After the fast, wide open game ended, the Ledgers poured out of their box and mobbed the final goal scorer.
 
"It was crazy," Schmitz said of the scene. "It was tough to breathe underneath that pile."
 
It was actually the second pile of the game.
 
The first came when Springs tied the game with 27 seconds left in regulation.
 
Arrowhead's Brady Vassar completed a monster game when he stabbed at a backhanded pass and his shot went top shelf to give the Warhawks (12-14-1) a 4-3 lead with a minute and a half left.
 
Steffes pulled the goalie and told his team to just shoot and get ready for any rebound.
 
"My God, it worked this time," he said about the result of Mathweg poking the puck just past the goalie as the referee emphatically pointed to the net to signal the tying goal.
 
"We didn't fold. We never gave up. The guys played hard the whole way through," Steffes said. "We had a couple let downs obviously, but you know, guys kept working; they didn't give up; they didn't pack it in."
 
Jacob Schultz scored Springs' other third-period goal when a Schmitz wrist shot from the blue line deflected off of Schultz. The Ledgers first two goals came from Tyler Grebe off of centering passes by Brendan Ahern and Eric Steffes. Grebe has 35 goals on the season.
 
Springs goalie Parker Deanovich made 36 saves — 27 through the first two periods, while Arrowhead goalie Jake Michael made 33, but needed one more.