Laker girls' hockey team earns first-ever state berth
Brian Wierima - 02/17/2012
ST. CLOUD - The odds were stacked against the Detroit Lakes girls’ hockey team to making
their first-ever Class 1A state appearance, as they entered the Section 6-1A championship game
Friday night in St. Cloud. Afterall, the Lakers entered the title game with a losing record at 11-15
and they were facing the seasoned and top-seeded Alexandria Cardinals, who make a trip to the
section championship game annually. Excuse the Lakers if they didn’t get that memo. Detroit
Lakes drew No. 2 seeded Warroad in the Class 1A state playoffs and will play the Warriors
Wednesday at 11 a.m. inside the Xcel Energy Center. Making their debut appearance in the
Section 6-1A championship game, the Lakers rode the shoulders of their freshman goalie
Veronica Badurek to a stunning 2-0 victory over the Cardinals (13-13-1) to earn their first state
berth in the program’s history. “We’ve never been in the section championship game, so we just
decided to go with the flow,” said DL senior forward and four-year starter Brianna Seebold. “We
went out and played for our lives. It’s just a dream come true for us.” Even though the young
Laker squad came in with no player ever even playing in a game of this proportion, the team
came out looking composed throughout the entire contest, especially one of their youngest
players in Badurek. The feisty goalie rode out a third period, in which saw the Cardinals
dominate play and outshoot the Lakers by a 14-6 margin. There were hard shots, point-blank
shots and long shots by the Cardinals. Each and every time, Badurek was up to the task and
recorded the much-deserving shutout with 29 saves. “I saw a lot of people standing in front of
me,” Badurek said with a laugh about her busy third period. “I really was in the zone, but I didn’t
see the puck a whole lot, I just was able to stop it.” Badurek made a statement early in the third
period on a flurry of Alexandria shots, in which she got her pads on every time, deflecting the
puck from every angle. From there on out, the DL defenders rallied by clogging the front of the
net and not giving the Cardinals many clean shots on Badurek. “All of us wanted to make smart
passes and push their (forwards) to the outside,” said senior defensive player Emily Raboin. “We
wanted to clear the puck away from our net.” With the game at a stalemate after the first period,
one of the state’s leading scorers in Seebold made the shot of the game. Skating down the right
side of the Alexandria zone, Seebold put all stick on the puck, which zipped right through the
slot and past Alexandria goalie Stephanie Drown, who was screened by several players. The
puck found the hole and DL held a 1-0 advantage at the 10:32 mark in the second period.
“Brianna has been such a hard worker throughout her time here and I am not surprised at all it
was her to put in that kind of goal,” said DL’s first-year head coach Gretchen Norby, who was on
the first-ever Laker team in 1998. “The kid has a lot of heart and desire every time she goes out
on the ice.” The first lead of the game was huge, with the contest looking like it was going to end
up being a defensive dogfight. It also pumped extra confidence into the Lakers, who started
looking like the seasoned state team and not Alexandria. “That was what we were playing for
coming out of the first intermission, getting that first goal,” Raboin said. “It looked like it put
Alexandria back on their heels a bit,” Seebold said of her goal. The final backbreaker came with
36 seconds left in the game, when junior defensive player Callie Johnson intercepted a Cardinal
pass at mid-ice and put a shot on the empty net. It went in, thus sealing DL’s biggest victory in
its program’s history. “I just stopped dead in my tracks watching it go in the net,” Raboin said of
Johnson’s empty-netter. “It was amazing. All I remember was thinking, ‘Is this for real?’”
Making it through that hard-fought third period was a perfect microcosm of the Laker’s section
playoff run — they survived against all odds. “You have to give Alexandria credit, they are a
good team and they came at us in the third period,” Norby said. “But this time, the Hockey Gods
were looking down on us. “But these girls deserved it, the playoffs are a new season. They
earned it.” Laker results Section 6-1A championship in St. Cloud: (1) Alexandria vs. (2) Detroit
Lakes, Friday, Feb. 17.
Lakers 0 1 1 – 2 Cardinals 0 0 0 – 0
1st Period -- Scoring: None Penalties: Iverson, ALEX (Checking, Minor, 2 min) 2:58. , DL (Too
Many Men on the Ice, Minor, 2 min) 6:40. Larsen, DL (Tripping, Minor, 2 min) 7:46. Ellingson,
ALEX (Tripping, Minor, 2 min) 8:30. Bartels, ALEX (Checking, Minor, 2 min) 14:24. Drown,
ALEX (Checking, Minor, 2 min) 16:59. 2nd Period -- Scoring: DL - Seebold Goal (Raboin)
6:28. Penalties: Payne, DL (Tripping, Minor, 2 min) 3:20. Kragenbring, ALEX (Holding, Minor,
2 min) 3:21. Aaberg, ALEX (Tripping, Minor, 2 min) 3:21. Bartels, ALEX (Checking, Minor, 2
min) 7:01. Johnson, DL (Tripping, Minor, 2 min) 7:56. Drown, ALEX (Interference, Minor, 2
min) 10:13. Payne, DL (Interference, Minor, 2 min) 10:21. Carlson, ALEX (Interference, Minor,
2 min) 14:44. 3rd Period -- Scoring: DL - Johnson Goal (EN) 16:24. Penalties: None. Shots on
goal – DL 5 10 6 – 21…Alex 9 6 14 – 29. Saves — DL (Veronica Badurek) 29…Alex
(Stephanie Drown) 19.