Women's hockey goes hunting in Maine

Mid-'90s. Minnesota. Somewhere among the vaunted lattice of ponds in the frozen north, two rising stars take to the ice together for the first time. Halfway across the country, Lisa Brown's Princeton women's hockey team is enjoying success in their new Eastern College Athletic Conference. Two completely unrelated events then, but now those two girls are the stalwart netminders for Tiger head coach Jeff Kampersal '92's team, a duo that splits playing time but shares success.

All year long, junior Sarah Ahlquist and sophomore Megan Van Beusehom have traded time in goal for Princeton (13-6-2 overall, 9-3-0 ECAC-North), a strategy that has the Tigers just one point off the ECAC Northern Division lead with six games left to play. So, when the weekend looms, who will guard the net for Princeton? Which goalie from the North Star State takes the spotlight?

The answer: Who knows?

"Last year it was really difficult," Ahlquist said of the goaltending strategy. "This year I've gotten used to it. I know that I'm on an every-other-game schedule."

Ahlquist shares time almost equally with Van Beusekom, three-time 2001-02 ECAC Goalie of the Week. In 21 Princeton games this season, Van Beusekom has wrestled the pucks 11 times while Ahlquist has been the wall of choice in the rest.

Looking at the stats, it's easy to see why there's no clear-cut favorite. Van Beusekom has a .926 save percentage, not exactly decisive against Ahlquist's .921 figure in the same category. Ahlquist has the edge in goals against average — 1.66 to the sophomore's 1.89 — again, an almost negligible difference. To translate, Ahlquist lets in roughly one more shot in every 200 but also allows one less goal in every five games. Obviously, it's not as easy a decision as starting Shaquille O'Neal over Stanislav Medvedenko.

Goalie is arguably one of the two or three most important single positions in sports. A dominant goalie is the prime foundation for any championship team. But as far as the Princeton Tigers are concerned, two heads are better than one.

"Both goalies are solid, and we're confident with either one behind us," sophomore forward Gretchen Anderson said. "To me, it makes no difference whether Ahlquist or Van Beusekom is in net."

"We are not thrown off by having a different goalie in net game-by-game," senior defender and co-captain Melissa Deland said. "Both Megan and Sarah have proven that they can play with the best of them."

"They play well no matter who's in net," Ahlquist said. "They've gotten used to how it goes back and forth each weekend, and they support us both equally."

Ahlquist and Van Beusekom often don't know who's starting their weekend games until Thursday night. Kampersal's staff watches practices all week, looks at recent performances, and analyzes their history against each opponent before making a decision.

"We have a lot of shooting drills all throughout practices," Ahlquist said. "We both get a chance to go in against our team's power play. A lot of the time it's more than just practice. Megan had a really strong game against Dartmouth last season, so he put her in again when we played up there this year, and she did really well. I played well against Providence, and he put me in against them."

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"There is obviously a lot of competition between them," Anderson said. "They both practice hard every day and try to make each other better and themselves better every day. Having that competition promotes them to play better."

Princeton is tied with St. Lawrence (17-7-3, 9-1-0) with 18 points for second place in the division, both teams trailing Brown (15-6-2, 9-3-1) by only a point.

Though the ECAC tournament title would look great in Kampersal's trophy case, his crew has a more pressing matter: a strong end to the ECAC season, starting tonight in Maine.

"We can't play down to any team's level or be intimidated by any team because we've beaten a lot of the quality teams in the league," said Ahlquist. "We know we can do it."

"It's going to take us getting healthy," Kampersal said. "Pretty much everyone in our lineup is banged up. We're going to be without [junior forward] Nikola Holmes this weekend, and that's a big part of what goes on for us. She plays about 30-35 minutes a game, so we're going to have to compensate for her loss, and then hopefully we'll get everybody healthy for the last games of the season."

Holmes suffered a high ankle sprain in last weekend's competition and will miss this weekend's action. Princeton is in Orono, ME this weekend for two games before returning home to take on Vermont and Dartmouth next weekend. It closes the regular season in early March at Brown and Yale.

Maine (14-12-2, 6-9-2) is stuck in fifth place in the ECAC-East division with no hope of catching powerhouse Niagara (20-6-1, 14-2-0). As always, however, Kampersal is on full alert.

"They'll be similar to some tough teams we played at the beginning of this year," Kampersal said. "They have four lines, and there'll be a lot of switches. It'll be a battle, for sure."

"Maine plays a lot like Mercyhurst," Deland said. "They are scrappy, physical and hard-working. We expect them to give us a good game but for our team to prevail."

The combined record of the Tigers' last six opponents is 59-55-8 and 29-30-4 in conference play. Eliminate feeble Vermont from that coagulation, however, and the records skyrocket to 58-31-7 overall and 29-18-4 in the ECAC. All of a sudden the five other Princeton opponents have a .641 winning percentage, .608 in the conference. Embedded in that mess are match-ups against northern division first-place Brown (15-6-2, 9-3-1) and fourth-place Dartmouth (16-4-2, 8-2-0). The Big Green have the top winning percentage in the north and are only in fourth by virtue of fewer games played.

Despite a tough end to a long season, the Tigers remain upbeat.

"We are in a terrific spot right now," Deland said, "The best place we have been in in years. This is the last stretch of our season and knowing that we are so close to winning the Ivies, it is an absolute joy to be playing everyday and competing. Right now, no one is thinking of anything else but playing through the middle of March."