Sports

Bottineau Stars runners-up for second straight season

By Tyler Ohmann

03/05/2013

For the second straight season the Bottineau Stars 19U hockey team came up just short.

The Stars once again advanced to the 19U State Championship last Sunday, but fell 2-1 at the hands of the Richland Rangers of Sidney, Mont.
It was the third time the Rangers nipped the Stars this season.

“We played a good team today,” said Bottineau head coach Matt Johnson. “We didn’t beat them all year. We lost to them in overtime, lost to them another time in the regular season.”

“I thought the girls played well, we just couldn’t quite get it home,” Johnson added.

Things looked strong for Bottineau early on as they scored the lone goal in the first period when Ashley Blue broke away and found the back of the net.

The Rangers evened things at 13:52 in the second period on a power play goal, which left the game deadlocked heading into the final frame.

There Jacie Ceglowski continued her strong play as she was pelted by Ranger shot attempts. However, with 2:21 left the Rangers managed to squeeze in a goal on a bouncing puck to score the game-winner.

“We had quite a few chances that we just didn’t get by their goalie,” Johnson said. “They got a pretty fortunate bounce on their winning goal, so that’s kind of what it came down to.”

The Stars were out shot 62-17 in the contest and Ceglowski was busy, stopping 60 Ranger shots. The loss hit the Stars pretty hard, since it was their second straight runner-up finish.

“We have some pretty upset girls,” Johnson said. “They wanted it pretty bad.”

Bottineau went 0-for-8 on the power play, including a big 5-on-3 opportunity in the second period. The Rangers were 1-for-3 with the one-player advantage.

To make it to Sunday’s championship game the Stars had to craft their way past two tough opponents early in the tournament.

In Friday’s opening round contest with seventh-seeded Crosby, Bottineau needed overtime to dispatch the Comets.

Crosby took an early lead as they punched in a pair of first period goals.

Blue scored a shorthanded goal in the second period to draw the Stars within one and then with only 24 seconds left scored the game-tying goal to force overtime.

In the extra period Bottineau’s other senior Natalie Bahr notched the game-winner with an unassisted goal.

“We had a pretty rough opening game,” Johnson said. “We were fortunate to even make it this far.”

Ceglowski had 22 saves, including two clutch saves in overtime.

Saturday’s game was rough in another sense for the Stars.

Despite a 5-0 win over the Bismarck Avalanche, Saturday’s game may have been the toughest in the tournament.

The game was highly physical and got out of control early. In the second period a Bottineau player was trying to slap in a rebound while the Avalanche goaltender scrambled to cover the puck.
An Avalanche player then tackled a Stars player and kicked her on the ground. A Bottineau player retaliated and the game got out of hand.

Both a Bismarck and Bottineau player were given 10 minute major penalties and ejected for the incident.

The game didn’t get any less physical after that. A Bismarck fan was ejected from the game, and the Avalanche coach received a rare bench penalty.

In total their were 24 penalties, including 13 in the second period, as the refs tried to gain control of the game.

Meanwhile amid all the noise the Stars played a fantastic game. Blue had a hat trick, scoring the Stars first three goals, all on the power play. Bahr assisted on two of the Blue goals.

Alexis Kihle scored in the second period as Blue slid a pass to her and Kihle found the back of the net.

Bahr concluded things with a score at 11:26 in the third period to make it a 5-0 win.

Ceglowski was superb in net for the Stars as she stopped all 49 Avalanche shots that came her way, earning herself a shut out.

Johnson summed up the Stars season pretty succinctly.

“We had a good year,” Johnson said. “We were 20-5 coming into the state tournament.”

That finished the Stars with a 22-6 overall record, three of their losses came to the Rangers.
For Bottineau’s two seniors, Blue and Bahr, Johnson said they are a tough pair to replace.

“They’ll be two tough people to replace next year, Ashley and Natalie both,” Johnson said. “They both meant a lot to this program.”

However, he is optimistic about the young players that return.

“We have five freshman, two sophomores, two juniors, so we return quite a good nucleus,” Johnson said. “We think we’ll be back next year competing for this again.”

Notes:

•  Blue scored six of Bottineau's nine goals and notched one helper in the tournament.
•  Ceglowski finished with an impressive 131 saves in 135 opportunities during the tournament a .970 save percentage.