Earlier this week RDC Queens hockey head coach Trevor Keeper was able to take a deep breath and relax just a bit.
When the NAIT Ooks downed the SAIT Trojans 4-2 Saturday evening it assured the Queens a berth in the Alberta Colleges Women’s Hockey League playoffs.
Quite an accomplishment considering the Queens went into the second half of the season with a 1-7-1-3 record and in last place.
Heading into their final two games of the regular season against NAIT — Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Arena and Friday at NAIT — the Queens have a 6-4-0 record in the second half.
“We met six games ago and talked about putting together a streak and getting into the playoffs as quickly as we could,” said Keeper. “We didn’t want to go into the final two weeks of the season needing to win one, or both. When SAIT lost it took some negative pressure off us, although we’re still looking at this as a pressure situation and we want to continue to commit to our game and go into the playoffs in the right frame of mind.”
The Queens are one of the youngest teams in the league with only five veterans and three of those — defenceman Alana Duncan, and forwards Rachael Hoppins and Chelsea Greenbank — in their second year. Forward and captain, Megan Abt, is the only fifth-year player on the roster with winger Brittany Erlandson in her third season.
The Queens have developed into one of the better defensive squads in the league, backed by solid goaltending in rookies Camille Trautman and Toni Ross.
“As coaches when we came in we stressed defence first and we’ve done a good job despite being so inexperienced.”
The Queens have also found some offence, led by first-year forward Jayna Kitchen, who is tied for second in the league with 10 goals.
“At the beginning of the year we had so much inexperience one of the last things we worked on was special teams,” said Keeper. “Our power play was last by a long shot now it’s up to third.”
The Queens will face the Mount Royal University Cougars in the league semifinals, a team they beat 3-1 and 2-1 in their last two meetings.
“That built a lot of confidence,” said Keeper. “At the beginning of the year we may have told the girls not to be intimidated by looking at their roster with the third, fourth and fifth year player, but they were. That’s not the case any more. We showed in the second half how well we can play, and everyone stepped up. Just look at Toni she stepped in against Mount Royal and beat them twice.”
• The basketball and volleyball have finished their regular season with all, but the Queens basketball advancing to the playoffs.
The volleyball Kings go into the championships , which are hosted by Briercrest, as the No. 1 ranked team.
It seems unbelievable that the Kings aren’t hosting the finals. They were tied at Christmas with Briercrest, who they beat twice, and Keyano, who they never did play.
In fact Briercrest didn’t play Keyano in the first half either and the fact they were in a three-way tie eliminated RDC, who didn’t have as a good win-loss set record.
Beginning next year it will be a bid process to determine the hosting institutions.
The Queens are ranked fourth heading into the playoffs at Medicine Hat.
The basketball Kings face Keyano in a best-of-three quarter-final, with all three games at RDC, expected to start either Feb. 23 or 24.
• It was a great weekend for volleyball Queens left side hitter, Makenzie Quinn, as she was named player of the match in both matches against NAIT — a 3-2 loss and 3-0 win. She had 24 kills, two aces and 24 digs in the two matches and was named the Boston Pizza RDC female athlete of the week and the ACAC athlete of the week.
Volleyball Kings right side Quentin Schmidt was the RDC male athlete of the week after accumulating 35 kills, three aces, 17 digs and two blocks in a pair of 3-2 wins over NAIT.
• The RDC badminton team will also be in action this weekend at the ACAC playoffs.
drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com