Girls Ice Hockey Falls to Princeton High School

BAYONNE, N.J.— Both goalies, Tori Round and Katherine Gargiulo, as well as senior captain Clare O'Malley were unable to make the game on Sunday, but freshman Grace Berkery, Jen Stabler and junior Caroline Hurkes stepped up and gave it their all in a tough loss to Princeton High School.

Princeton drew first blood but Stabler answered back off an assist from Marion Sayre.  The Hilltoppers held Princeton off for most of the first period, but PHS scored three goals within one minute and the first period ended Summit 1, Princeton 5.

"Our positioning is better at times, but it's not consistent," said head coach Matt Stanbro.  "I feel we get 100 percent effort most of the time.  But we need it to be all the time."

Stuart Humphey led the offense on the ice in the second period.  They maintained a constant attack on the PHS goalie.  Their opponent's offense tried to strike back but found two Summit defenders between them and the goal for most of the second period.

"Our D is starting to do things right," said Stanbro. "We're starting to apply some of the things we do in practice."

Summit continued the two-man-back defense that they've been working on throughout the season.  When the Hilltoppers execute it correctly, the strategy worked well.

An equipment failure time-out halfway through the second period seemed to take away all the momentum that Summit had going for them and Princeton would score two more goals within two minutes of each other.  The second period would end that way, Summit 1, Princeton 7.

The third period saw two more goals for PHS, one coming with eight seconds left in the game.  The final score was Summit 1, Princeton 9.  With that the Hilltoppers fall to 0-6-1.

"I am proud," said Stanbro. "Second and third period we stayed with them.  As long as we do that consistently, we'll get a much better result."

The Hilltoppers will face Lawrenceville Prep on Saturday at Bridgewater Arena at 5:10 p.m.