SUNY Oswego’s transition to the ACHA

Starting off a new season in a new league was not as easy as my teammates and I had hoped. As much as we were trying to prepare for what we knew was going to be a tough couple of first games, we unfortunately had not prepared enough. Even with all the off-ice workouts running stairs, hours in the gym lifting, or on-ice practices, it didn’t prepare us enough for what to expect from the teams we were going to be facing in this league.

In our first College Hockey East league game, we fell 8-0 to the University of Buffalo, which also happened to be at my hometown rink in front of all my friends and family. My teammates and I fought hard, but couldn’t figure out how to use each other’s strengths to put the puck in the net. We unfortunately struggled to help our goalies out, and got a little frustrated with each other due to this. While this seemed like a discouraging start, every single one of us knew that our next two games (which were also both away games again) were going to be just as tough, and that we had to figure it out sooner rather than later.

This past weekend, we hopped on a bus and drove down to Pennsylvania to play West Chester University first, and got our first league win! While we were making great passes and skating the puck, we were only able to put three to the back of the net. While we were all super pumped up for our first league win, we knew our opponent for the next game was going to be as tough as our first opponent this season.

The following day we went a little further south into Maryland where we played Navy. Unfortunately, the outcome of this game wasn’t as positive as the previous one. We ended up losing 7-2 after putting up a good fight and keeping up with them for two solid periods. If you watched the game, you would say that we just couldn’t find the back of the net. The third period is when we realized that our training only got us so far. With girls out sick and missing from the line up, our bench was a little short, so you could definitely tell that we were all exhausted.

After playing these three games in the new league, we now know exactly what we are up against, and can focus our attention to the weak spots in our game. As each game progressed people started noticing things that we needed to improve as a team, as well as things that the other team seemed to be doing better than us. Through each game we got better and better. Hopefully this means that our team will win more games in this league, and eventually beat these teams when we face them again.

Although our record may not look the best right now, I believe that we will continue to grow and get better every week. Every player knows that teams somehow “mesh together” as the season goes on, and that usually means that more good things happen on the ice. I can’t wait to see what we will be accomplishing as the season continues!