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St. Cloud State University
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Badgers face confident SCSU
By Ben Birnell
Published:
Thursday, November 7, 2002
In the land of ice and hockey pucks, there’s one thing that can bring happiness to a coach and restore a team’s confidence.
If you’re the SCSU women’s hockey team, it’s gaining back one of your most valued and best defenseman on the team.
This week will mark the return of Husky captain and All-WCHA player Kobi Kawamoto. Kawamoto returns to action after breaking her leg in the team’s exhibition game against the Beatrice Jr. Aeros more than a month ago. After missing seven games, Husky head coach Jason Lesteberg is happy to have Kawamoto back in the lineup.
“If you look at our past couple of games, we rotated four defensemen, two sophomores and two freshmen,” Lesteberg said. “So now we get a two-time all-conference defenseman back there with junior Leanne Perrin. That age and wisdom should help out our younger players.”
Kawamoto is also happy to be back on skates. With her experience, and the presence she brings as a captain, she feels that she’ll help the team.
“I think I bring a lot more experience than our 10 freshmen,” she said. “I think it brings a lot of confidence too, because I’ve been starting for the past few years. I had a lot of the freshmen on recruiting trips and I think they kind of looked up to me as an upperclassman.”
Along with the injury bug that hit the team so hard in the early games of the season, the team has also had a problem scoring goals. One of the players that has felt this most is junior forward Roxy Stang. Although still early in the season, Stang has scored only once. Last year she scored 33 goals and had nine assists. She feels like she’s ready for a breakout game.
“I know I’ve been in a slump, until I scored that goal,” Stang said. “We need some offensive power. Having Kobi back, and the rest of the players back, is going to help.”
One of the aspects that is also making Lesteberg happy is that he has a goaltender in senior Laura Gieselman who is stepping up.
“It’s Gieselman’s job to lose. I thought she’s played well. She had a tough game against Minnesota, but against Mercyhurst she only gave up two goals a game,” Lesteberg said. “Right now her save percentage is close to 90, but the reason it’s so high is because of the Minnesota game.”
This weekend the Huskies take on the University of Wisconsin. With his players close to 100 percent, Lesteberg feels good going into this weekend’s series.
Lesteberg said that he thought the Badgers played well against Minnesota-Duluth and then had a good game against Minnesota.
“Wisconsin’s a skilled team, they’re definitely defensive oriented, but with two defensemen out, we’ll see how they react.”
