Girls Hockey: Caxys beat Naper Valley, keep season alive

The chips weren’t stacked in Lake Forest Academy’s favor from the outset on Sunday, March 8.

Not only did the Founders Cup semifinals fall on the school’s spring break, which forced captain Currie Smith to miss, but fellow captains Carly Thomas and Kristin Chivers missed the entire first period with another game earlier in the day with their traveling
team.

It didn’t matter. No. 1-seeded Lake Forest Academy weathered the storm early on before cruising to a 4-0 win over No. 4 Naper Valley once the team was nearly at full strength.

“It was great, it got our team really excited,” goalie Natalie Warnes said about getting her two captains back for the last two periods. “The whole team got settled down a little bit, because we knew we would be OK. Our team was already pumped we made it without any goals against us in the first period.”

The arrival of Thomas and Chivers was the boost the team needed to reverse the flow of play.

“They were happy, especially when I came on the bench with my skates and my shin guards in my hand, with the order that I put everything on,” Chivers said.

The game was won in the opening stanza when Warnes made 10 of her 22 saves to keep the clean sheet as she withstood an onslaught from Naper Valley. Her highlight reel save was a breakaway stop at the outset of the second session.

“We all knew that the first period was the key period,” Warnes said. “We are a third period team. We had to hold tight until our two other players got there.”

Chivers had a pair of goals and a pair of assists to pace her squad. The senior bagged the second and third goals of the game.

“You could see that once [Chivers and Thomas] got in the game that frees up a lot of our girls to really focus in on their jobs specifically,” said first-year assistant coach Mathias Kerr. “Even the stress level went down.”

Her first finish was in the upper right corner of the net from the mid-center of the offensive zone with 10 minutes, 17 seconds left in the second period.

Chivers made it 3-0 at the 13:25 point of the final period with a backhand shot off the crossbar with assists coming from Caroline Miller and Michaela Crowley.

Danielle Kelly opened the scoring after Chivers shot went wide right to the boards to Crowley, whose centering pass set up
Kelly.

Crowley rounded out the scoring with 11:20 to go, as she stuck home a pass from Chivers in front of the net.