JETS SPLIT SQUADS BETWEEN MARKHAM AND PHILADELPHIA

The Toronto Golden Jets senior women were forced to split the squad in order to honour commitments to tournaments that fell on the same weekend. The result was underwhleming as the two teams combined for only one win in seven games.
 

One group of 13 players went with head coach Evan Price on a whirlwind 36 hour trip to Philadelphia to face three Division 1 NCAA schools in the prime of their seasons.
 

On Friday night, after a 9+ hour drive in the van, the team jumped into the pool at La Salle University to play the Explorers. The team fought hard and actually won three quarters of the game but a 5-1 loss in the third quarter led to a 16-13 defeat.
 

After only 6 hours of sleep, the team moved on to Villanova University for a 9am game against the #23 ranked Wildcats followed an hour and a half later by a match versus the Salem University Tigers.
 

Not surprisingly, the Jets got off to a slow start and found themselves trailing 4-0 half way through the first quarter against Villanova. However, the players woke up and scored three unanswered goals to close out the opening period trailing by only one. That was as close as Toronto would get and the team fell 15-7 to the hosts.
 

With only an hour and a half to rest before playing the rested Tigers who were playing their first game of the day, not much was expected.
 

However, after falling behing 4-1 in the first quarter, the Jets won the next three quarters by a goal but still fell short in a 11-9 losing effort.
 

In the second period, Toronto fought back and got to within two goals at 7-5. After going down 8-5 at the start of the third quarter, Toronto struck for three unanswered goals to tie things up. Salem got one back before the end of the period to lead 9-8 entering the final frame.
 

The teams traded goals in the fourth and the score stayed 10-9 until the last 20 seconds when the Tigers salted the game away on the power play.
 

Josie Andrist led all scorers with five goals on 10 shots. Hannah Levin (4 shots) and Devon Lynch (10 shots) each scored twice.
 

In Toronto (Markham Pan Am pool), the other half of the Jets squad had to play four games in 48 hours as part of the Canadian National League (NCL). Three of the four games were against the top two teams in the Eastern Conferece (both from Montreal) and the Jets lost them all. Toronto's lone victory came against Ottawa Black.
 

The weekend marked the end of games against NCAA competition. Still left are the NCL Eastern Conference playoffs in Kingston at the end of the month followed by the National Championships in Gatineau in May (if the team qualifies).