The Concordia Stingers women’s hockey team trailed from beginning to end in a 5-0 loss to the Queen’s Gaels in the final game of the 46th annual Theresa Humes Tournament.
The tournament, hosted by Concordia from Jan. 3-5, honoured Humes, who played a key role in developing both women’s hockey and women’s sports in general at the varsity level as director of women’s athletics from 1978 to 1985.
“This tournament’s always a really good opportunity for all these teams to get back into
league play after being off for five or six weeks,” said Stingers head coach Les Lawton.
The Stingers started this year’s edition with a 3-2 loss to York, but bounced back the next day for a 3-2 win against St. Thomas University.
Concordia struggled in the final game of the weekend against Queen’s. The Kingston team took an early lead and never looked back.
After a sluggish start, the home team’s first real scoring opportunity came five minutes into the first period when Alyssa Sherrard and Erin Lally broke out two-on-one. Lally took a bouncing pass and shot inches wide of the net.
After the close call, Queen’s would dominate the rest of the first period.
The Gaels took advantage of the first power play of the game. Defender Danielle Girard attacked Stingers goalie Carolanne Lavoie-Pilon’s left side to open the scoring.
Barely two minutes later, Queen’s struck again when forward Megan Farrell took a pass from Jessica Wakefield and increased the lead to two goals.
Queen’s would add a third marker before the first intermission on Wakefield’s high shot after the Stingers’ Tracy-Ann Lavigne had picked up a two-minute penalty for bodychecking.
That goal was enough to end Lavoie-Pilon’s night for the Stingers, as goalie Frédèrike Berger-Lebel came on to defend the cage.
The Stingers’ struggles continued in the second period as two more Queen’s goals made it a 5-0 game.
After a difficult first 40 minutes of play, Concordia was the better team in the third and was able to keep Queen’s scoreless.
“We didn’t get the goaltending that we usually get, but I didn’t think the score indicated the play over the 60 minutes,” said Lawton following the loss.
“Although I’m disappointed with the score, I wasn’t disappointed with my team’s performance, in the sense that we didn’t stop working after it was five nothing,” said Lawton about his team’s last period.
“We really limited their chances in the second half,” he added.
Operating with a very young roster, Lawton sees the tournament as another building block.
He hopes to finish the season strong and build on the team’s three wins from the first half.
“Hopefully, since we’re such a young team, we’ve learned a little bit from the first half of the season and we can get a couple of wins to secure a playoff spot,” he said before pausing.
“And then who knows what can happen in the playoffs?”
