Right where they left off

Coming off their 2018 ACHA Championship last season, the Liberty University women’s DI hockey team took down the Hamilton Hawks 3-1 at Lahaye Ice Center Saturday afternoon.

The Flames got off to a slow start to begin the season opener, which sophomore forward Shelby Bradford attributed to first game nerves.

“The first game, [we] had to get the rust off,” Bradford said.

Bradford missed a shot early in the first period in the corner of the net, which would have put the Flames up by one.

“I have no idea, I just had a little pregame jitters,” Bradford said. “It was a beautiful pass by Mac [Lauren McDonald] and I [just] missed it.”

Liberty would find themselves down 1-0 after the first period.

The second period began with two power play kills, one by each team. Then sophomore forward, Danica Polson, would end the dry spell and put the Flames on the board with 7:33 left in the period.

Liberty began to show why they were ACHA Champions in the third period, as they began to play faster and harder, wearing down Hamilton as the period went on. Sophomore forward Shelby Bradford would redeem herself with 8:31 to go, cashing in on a deflected pass.

“That was really good, it just came right to me, so it was a nice little tap in,” Bradford said.

The Hamilton Hawks pulled their goalie with under one minute to go in the game, before Freshman forward Grace Machholz scored an empty net goal with thirty seconds left.

When asked about standouts from the game, head coach Chris Lowes believed that all of Liberty’s new players had a good showing, and he felt that junior forward Deena Birney played very well, despite switching positions and having very little practice time at the position.

“I thought our D-core played pretty solid, and both goalies stood tall today,” Lowes said. “We have pretty high goals, hockey wise, we certainly are not lowering our expectations, I feel like we have a good group to go back and be pretty successful. You never really know until the season gets going. Ultimately, we hope to be at nationals at the end of the year. From there if we’re playing great hockey and we’re putting things together, you hope you can win five games in a row.”

He said likes the group and that he has a good outlook for the season.

“Thinks it will be a good year, on and off the ice,” Lowes said. “Not just hockey but spiritually and academically. Today’s game is not even about winning or being great, it is the first step of a long process, and most teams are not even thinking of playing for another couple weeks. We like getting a game in early, we really appreciate our relationship with Hamilton.”

As far as improvements go, Lowes said that as a team they have not scratched the surface yet with game planning and implementing systems.

“Today was really about getting our legs out, getting going, competing a little bit, putting that jersey on for the first time,” Lowes said.

“The team itself is really good, we have a lot of cohesion on our team, which is really nice. Personally, I played alright, I was getting a lot of rust off the skates,” said defensemen Clarissa Tipping said.

Tipping wants to continue to be a great leader on the ice, both spiritually and physically.

“As a team cohesively, we just want to grow spiritually in our relationship with God,” Tipping said.

The Liberty Flames will have a double-header weekend next week, as they play the Washington Pride Saturday Sept. 8, 5:30 PM and Sunday Sept. 9, at the Lahaye Ice Center.