Wheeldon helps Trojans cap semester with win over Queens

RED DEER, ALTA., (Nov. 30, 2019) - Finally, some good news for the SAIT Trojans women's hockey team.

On the short end of two straight one-goal losses, the Trojans ended their first semester of Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) regular season play with a 3-2 win over the Red Deer College Queens Saturday night in Red Deer, Alta.

"We've had a lot of one-goal games this year, and it was nice to be on the winning side of one again," said Trojans captain Tashel Scantlebury (5th year, Foxwarren, Man., Community Economic Development), who scored the game-winner. "We got bounces today, we got what we deserved. We had a rough start to the game, but how those girls responded shows a lot of what they're made of."

SAIT will go into the holiday break with a 2-10 record. Not great by any means, but Scantlebury is confident her team will be able to carry over that momentum when they start up again on Jan. 10 and 11.

"It's all about buy-in, for sure," she said. "We know what we can do, and we know we can play with anyone. We just need to continue getting better every day and things will take care itself. We'll be ready to get going again in January."

When Scantlebury said it was a tough start Saturday night, she was not kidding. It took less than two minutes for the home side to get on the board when Jessi-Lynn Sumaling beat Trojans goalie Cassidy Brown (1st year, Calgary, Health Fundamentals).

SAIT's Emma Wheeldon (3rd year, Nelson, BC, Bachelor of Business Administration) then scored a pair of power play goals over 19 minutes apart in the second period to give her team the lead - the second coming after she fell down in front of the net and shoved the puck in while sitting on the ice with one second left in the frame.

The eventual game-winner came in the third period when the Trojans were on the power play. A shot on the Red Deer net rebounded out and slid past a host of players and towards the face-off dot to the left of Queens goalie Madison Fox.

Scantlebury skated in off her post on the blueline and leaned into a slap shot that beat Fox inside the post.

Red Deer cut the lead to 3-2 when Avery Lajeunnesse scored later in the period, but that is as close as they would get.

"The room was buzzing. We were pretty excited," Scantlebury explained when asked about the mood afterwards. "We did everything we were working on in practice, we scored three power play goals. We're happy that doing the little things right worked out for us."