We are the champions!

By Tom Obert
Cub Reporter
For the first time in history, the Alexandria girls hockey team are the champions of the Central Lakes Conference. Our overall record now is 18-1-4, and we will undoubtedly be a No. 1 seed when the sectional tournaments begin in a couple of weeks. The following report of Thursday's game against Willmar was faithfully submitted by cub reporter-in-training, Bob Annen:

"We barely scraped by tonite. Final score 12 to 1. Their only goal came late in the 3rd period against our 3rd string goalie. Her number 48 was not even on the sheet. I won't give you all the scoring but suffice to say Mighty Mouse [a/k/a Abby Williams] had 4 goals. Take that you Aces!"
Thanks, Bob.

The real cub reporter, correctly suspecting last night's girls hockey result, opted instead to attend last night's boys basketball game against Willmar (yes, sometimes one must deal with scheduling conflicts). Though having previously beaten Willmar at Willmar, last night the boys could not throw the ball in the ocean and went down to ignominious defeat. On the positive side, however, the Alexandria Aces (note the cub reporter-in-training's snotty reference above) performed at halftime and received a standing ovation.

We beat Apollo
On Tuesday night, in the penultimate game to wrapping up the conference title, our girls whupped up on the St. Cloud Apollo/Cathedral/St.Joseph/Waite Park/Avon Icebreakers (OK, I made some of that up - what part I'm not sure because not even a Google search could verify what schools make up what we know is another multiple school team tossed at our Cards), 5 - 0. This was an important game because when we played them at Apollo, they came back from a 3 - 0 deficit in the third period to tie the game 3 - 3. The scoring in Tuesday's game was started by Abby Williams with one of her patented end-to-end rushes that brings everyone out of their seats. Abby scored 2 goals in the game, as did our own Bud Bruzek's Brittney, and Kathryn Del Zoppo got the other goal (I'm always a little concerned when we have to rely on our first line to score all our goals). My fan promotional efforts started to bear fruit at this game - we actually had seven non-parental adults in attendance, including Sue Engstrom for her first ever game (she immediately e-mailed me after the game inquiring as to the date of the next home game).

We were concerned when Ahna Olson did not appear for the Apollo game. Ahna is a senior captain defenseman. We have since learned that she hurt a knee in the Bemidji game, and though it appeared serious at first, she should be healthy at tournament time. She would have been a major loss for our prospects.