Crookston Pirate Girls Hockey freshman Jocelyn Field had two goals and one assist, and senior goaltender Kamebelle Freije stopped 38 shots, including the 1000th save of her career. The 4-0 shutout tied her for the Crookston High School Girl’s Hockey record for shutouts, as the Pirates defeated River Lakes at the Ralph Engelstad Arena Holiday Classic in Thief River Falls.
First Period
Field might be short in stature, but the freshman can skate and has some moves as well that she uses to set herself or teammates. She found herself in front of the River Lakes net and her linemates, Addie Fee and Hadley Verwest, forced the puck on goal and Field was about five feet from the goaltender and lifted a nice accurate shot to the goalie’s left side and connected on her first goal of the season to make it 1-0 with six and a half minutes gone in the first period. “It was great to see Jocelyn get that first goal,” said Pirate head coach Reed Olson, “she works hard and has had some great chances in the first two games. and I felt when she scored her first one, she’s going to get some more.” Both teams took some penalties throughout the game, but a lot of them were either coincidental or taken close to each other, so there weren’t as many power play as you’d think with 13 penalties including a major on Crookston. “We’ve been saying that we have to be more disciplined,” said Olson, “it’s good to be physical in your defensive zone, but you have to be smart about it as well.” One of the times late in the period when both teams were at full strength, Crookston struck again with junior defenseman, Ashlyn Bailey who has tremendous speed, used it to rush from end to end and was in the circle to the left of the Stars goalie, Kaydence Roeske, who has committed to play Division I hockey at Minnesota State Mankato next year, snapped off a shot that Roeske didn’t see, and Crookston led 2-0 with 3:02 left in the period. “It’s a real plus to have a couple of defensemen like Ashlyn and Adley Vigness, who have outstanding speed and can use it offensively, but also defensively to get back on defense.”
Second Period
Nobody scored in the 17 minutes second period, but both had some opportunities to score. About midway through the period Crookston crashed the River Lakes zone and Fee and Field had some outstanding chances in front as both tried tips in front that Roeske make great saves on. Crookston’s Parker Strand had some good chances as well. “I thought Parker had a good game,” said Olson of the Mayville product, “she had a number of good chances to score. River Lakes also showed some spark as they had double figures in shots in each period. A big senior captain, Sophia Hess had multiple chances and was stuffed by Freije throughout. “I thought our defense played well during the game,” said Freije, “I like to deflect shots to the corners to keep away from in front of my net, but our defense does a good job of clearing pucks and then keeping shots to the outside and gives me a clear sight of the shot.” Crookston cranked out 18 shots on goal but still led 2-0 after the second.
Third Period
With a 2-0 lead and your opponent has thrown 23 shots at your goal, one would say the 2-0 lead might be tenuous! The way to undo that thought is to score some more goals! The Pirate did just that with two goals about a minute and a half apart. It started with Field from inside her own blueline finding Fee near the River Lakes blue line. Fee made the catch, was turned around by a Stars defenseman and Fee made a nice move to free herself and onto her forehand and unload a bullet that went top left shelf to give the Pirates a 3-0 lead with just over nine minutes to go in the game. “It was great to see Addie get some space, and she really snapped off a great shot top shelf,” said Coach Olson. Then just a bit later Field started from her own end and flew into the River Lakes end and buried a shot for her second goal of the game and made it 4-0 with seven minutes to go. There were four penalties on River Lakes in the third period, while the Pirates had one minor and one major penalty. Crookston ended up 0-4 on the power play while River Lakes was 0-2 after all the penalties and even on the five-minute major they had, they ended up taking two penalties during this time and ended up with about 30 seconds of a possible five minutes with the man advantage!! “We have to do some work on the power play, that’s for sure,” said Coach Olson, “All the penalties seem to come when either our number one power play uniting a shift, or we’d draw a penalty, was just finish which would limit our power play. They took eight penalties in the game, and we were 0-4!!” Crookston finished out the game, giving up 15 shots and 38 total for the game, in which Freije stopped them all for her first shutout of the season and 13th in her career, which ties her with Amy (Burke) Erdmann!! She also got her 1,000th career save in the first period and now has 1,029 saves!! “It’s unreal,” said Freije, “I have to thank my teammates, coaches and a lot of hard work, but we have a bunch of games left this season and hopefully we’ll pick up some more wins.” Freije signed a letter of intent to play college hockey at Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Crookston improves to 2-1 on the year and will host Rock Ridge (Eveleth-Gilbert/Virginia) on Friday night and then a Section 8A game on Saturday afternoon against visiting International Falls. Both games will be Video Streamed on KROX TV and the I-Falls game will also be on radio. River Lakes falls to 4-5 on the season with two losses in the Thief River Falls Classic. The Stars play their games at Richmond and Paynesville arenas and will be in action on Tuesday at Brainerd-Little Falls and Friday at Pequot Lakes to take on Northern Lakes.
| Team | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Final |
| River Lakes | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Crookston | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
1st Period
10:26 – Crookston – Jocelyn Field (1) (Addie Fee, Hadley Verwest)
3:02 – Crookston – Ashlyn Bailey (1) (Shyuh Burnette, Kaylie Clauson)
2nd Period
No Scoring
3rd Period
9:19 – Crookston – Addison Fee (2) (Jocelyn Field)
7:47 – Crookston – Jocelyn Field (2) (Ashlyn Bailey)
| Goalie | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total |
| Kaydence Roeske – RL | 10 | 18 | 15 | 43 |
| Kamebelle Freije-Crox | 13 | 10 | 15 | 38 |
