Final stretch holds challenges for Hawks

The Wilfrid Laurier women’s hockey team is still hanging onto the top of the Ontario University Athletics’ (OUA) standings thanks to two wins this past weekend.

The Hawks rolled over the Toronto Varsity Blues 6-1 the Ryerson Rams 5-2, welcoming the second half of the 2012-13 season.

“It was definitely a good start getting back from the break,” said team captain Fiona Lester.

“We had a couple exhibition games after Christmas, but this was our first league game so it was good to get some offence going,” she said.

Laurier participated in two Christmas tournaments where they went 2-1 in each. The lone loss in in the Hawks holiday tournament was to the McGill Martlets while the Brock Badgers stunned the Hawks in the Waterloo Warriors Christmas tournament 3-2.

With the games against Toronto and Ryerson being the first two regular season games of the 2013 campaign, the Hawks looked toward improving on the performance they left with in 2012.

And while the team is always refining, Lester ensures the team has no issues to pan out.

Laurier is now in the final portion of their year, with only seven games remaining. While six of them are on the road, the Hawks will have a tough ending to a more competitive year.

“A lot of our next games are all challenging, even this weekend coming up, it’s going to be definitely challenging but we are really focused right now and are working really hard off the ice as well as on the ice and just trying to make January a successful month,” Lester said.

Among the challenges lying ahead are games against Windsor, Western, Guelph and Queen’s. While Western and Windsor have fallen in the standings since the beginning of the season, Queen’s and Guelph trail Laurier by one and two points respectively.

And although the team wants to be at the top of the league again, their first goal is to be ready for the postseason.

“We’re not even so worried about the results of the games in terms of winning and losing just as being ready when playoffs come so that’s what we’re focused on right now,” she said.

The Hawks will travel to Windsor and Western and York in the next two weeks before returning home to face UOIT.