The women’s hockey team closed out the season this past weekend with two final NESCAC games. On Friday night, the Cardinals played a hard-fought game against Hamilton, and then finished off the weekend with another tough matchup against Connecticut College on Saturday afternoon. While Wes entered the weekend needing only a tie in either game to qualify for the NESCAC Championship, a pair of losses left the team frozen out of the tournament field.

At Spurrier-Snyder Rink on Friday evening, the Cards battled it out with the Continentals for 60 minutes. Wesleyan came out strong in the first period, but had trouble keeping the puck in the offensive zone. Although the Continentals outshot the Cards 14-6, Wesleyan played a strong defensive period and only let in one goal at about the six-minute mark. The Cards continued to work hard for the remainder of the period, preventing the Continentals from scoring again before the clock ran out.

Heading into the second period down by one, the Cards tried to set up plays in the offensive zone, but were unable to maintain control of the puck long enough to set anything up. Hamilton took control again and scored a second goal 13:42 into the period, lifting the score to 2-0. Once again, the Continentals outshot the Cards 12-5. The third period was a nothing short of a battle, as Hamilton continued to pound Wesleyan’s net with shots. The Cards, with the help of Ashleigh Corvi ’13 between the pipes, were determined to prevent the Continentals from scoring again in the last twenty minutes.

Although the Continentals almost quadrupled Wesleyan’s number of shots on net, the Cards held strong defensively and refused to let Hamilton raise the score. With two minutes left in the game, the Cards tried to set up in the offensive zone ine one last attempt to score, but were ultimately unsuccessful and finished off the game with a 2-0 loss.

“When we played Hamilton at the beginning of the season, we lost 7-2, so only losing 2-0 was a pretty big improvement,” said defenseman Becca Koppel ’13. “I think we played hard and had chances, but two of the bounces just didn’t go our way.”

The Cards entered into their final game of the season against the Camels eager to redeem themselves, but they were unable to come away with a win. Wesleyan had a rough start to the game, as they failed to maintain the strong defensive positioning they had demonstrated the night before. The Camels picked up three goals before the 15-minute mark, as they outshot the Cards 20-2 in the first period.

“We didn’t come out with the fire we needed to have, which allowed them to gain momentum against us,” said Koppel.

Wesleyan managed to get back on its feet in the second period and created a few more opportunities in the offensive zone, but it was not enough to prevent the Camels from scoring another two goals that period, raising the score to 5-0.

The Cardinals once again struggled in the third period as they let in two more goals before the clock ran out. Although Corvi stopped an impressive 35 shots throughout the game, the Cardinals’ season ended with a tough 7-0 loss.

“I think we got nervous and forgot that it was just a hockey game,” said Jaime Bonner ’12. “They scored a bunch of power-play goals on us and the game didn’t seem like a reality until the third period.”

Even so, the season ended on a positive note. “Our coaches told us that none of us ever quit the entire season and we still did not quit today,” Bonner said. “Although the score of our game was awful today, we never gave up.”

Wesleyan closed out the final weekend with a 0-2 record, leaving the squad with a final record of 4-18-1. The Cardinals were not satisfied with how the season ended, but the the team doubled its win total from 2008-09 (2-21-1), and the Cardinals are already thinking about and looking forward to making large improvements for the 2010-11 season.