Women battling for spot
Feb. 5, 2010 - Regina Leader-Post
By Ian Hamilton
Objects in the rear-view mirror appear to be getting closer, but Sarah Howald is keeping her eyes on the road ahead.
Howald's University of Regina Cougars women's hockey team goes into this weekend's series in Winnipeg against the University of Manitoba Bisons as the fourth-place team in Canada West. As such, Regina holds the conference's final playoff spot with three weekends left in the regular season.
The Cougars have a record of 5-7-6 for 16 points, one more than the UBC Thunderbirds (7-12-1 entering their series this weekend in Saskatoon against the Saskatchewan Huskies), four more than the Lethbridge Pronghorns (4-10-4 entering a series with the Alberta Pandas), and five more than the Calgary Dinos (5-14-1, with a bye this weekend).
"I'm not worried," Howald, the Cougars' head coach, said Thursday before the team boarded a Winnipeg-bound bus. "We've just got to worry about ourselves.
"We've played well enough. We're in every game. And we have the season series on everybody (behind Regina in the standings) because of our shootout losses."
The Cougars are 2-1-1 against UBC, 1-0-1 versus Lethbridge and 2-1-1 against Calgary this season.
After the series against the Bisons, Regina completes the regular season with a series at home to the Pronghorns (while UBC visits Calgary) and a home-and-home set against the Huskies (while the Dinos play a home-and-home with Lethbridge).
The Cougars' games -- not the contests being played by Regina's pursuers -- are the ones that concern Howald.
"That's what you have to do," she said. "You can't control what other teams are doing, so you worry about your own stuff. I think Terry (O'Malley, who helps Howald during practices) is the only one who's paying attention.
"You see the scores, but it's so out of your control that what's the point? Ultimately, you have to play well. If you don't, you probably shouldn't be in the playoffs anyway."
Howald wants to see the Cougars handle themselves better on the road down the stretch since it's extremely likely that they'll be away from home if they do make the playoffs. Their first two tests in that vein come this weekend in Winnipeg.
The other goal Howald has for her team is to play like one.
"We need to have everybody playing well, 100 per cent, or else we won't win a game," Howald said. "Maybe some teams can have four or five people carrying the load, but we really can't. We have to have 100 per cent of the people showing up 100 per cent of the time."