Jacob Pian, Staff Writer          

The women’s hockey team beat Manhattanville College twice last weekend. They didn’t run up the score sheet but when taking a deep dive into the stats, it wasn’t all that close.

They went into the Friday, Jan. 21 game on an 11-game win streak against Manhattanville, who were 9-6-1 at the time. 

Both teams started off strong and went into the locker room after the first period with a score of 0-0. Then came the Pioneers in the second period and their leading scorer Georgiana Santullo, who started the scoring at the 7:23 mark of the second period assisted by Erica Soan and Carly Stefanini. 

A few minutes later, Carolyn Whitney scored another one, giving the Pioneers a 2-0 lead. This goal was also assisted by Erica Sloan.

The Pioneers came back onto the ice for the third period with a commanding 2-0 lead. The power play was the story of this third period as Caroline Whitnet got her second goal of the game on the man advantage, assisted by Madison Novotny and Maggie Rylott. A few minutes later the Pioneers struck again on the man advantage when Madison Novotny got her second point of the game on her unassisted power play goal.

Friday’s  game ended with a score of 4-0 and much credit has to go to the Pioneers goalkeeper, Angela Hawthorne, who picked up her eighth shutout of the season. She finished the game with 25 saves. A big part of the game was the Pioneers’ penalty kill. They killed off 13 minutes of power play time for Manhattanville. This win brought the Pioneers win streak to a whopping 12 games and bringing their season record to 13-1-1.

“Our goal for the rest of the season is continue to grind and get better day in and day out,” Sloan, who leads the team in points, said. “Winning the UCHC would be the top of our goals list and then continue into the NCAA tournament. We have the team to do it as we have a very deep bench.”

The Jan. 22 game was similar to the previous day’s game as there was no score after the first period. Maggie Rylott scored her eighth goal of the season just 43 seconds into the second period. A few minutes later Erica Sloan added to her large total with her eleventh goal of the season giving the Pioneers a 2-0 lead. Then came Gabrielle Cox who scored the unassisted goal and first of the weekend for the Valiants cutting this game to 2-1. Carly Stefanini didn’t take long scoring for the pioneers and getting her team back to a comfortable 2 goal lead.

The third period was quiet with no scoring which meant this game ended 3-1 in the Pioneers favor. The Pioneers swept the weekend and picked up their 13 straight win and solidified themselves at the no. 13 spots in the country. 

The no. 13 ranked Utica Pioneers had one of their toughest matchups of the season on Tuesday, Jan. 24 going against the no. 7 ranked Hamilton Continentals. This was a hard fought and close game until the second period came when the Continentals scored 2 goals in 44 seconds.

Maggie Rylott scored 3:31 into the third period. This was her ninth of the season and was assisted by Cortney Staniszewski and Carolyn Whitney. This was a huge goal for the Pioneers and momentum was on their side for the first time of the game. 34 seconds later the Pioneers tied this game. It was Hailey Modlin picking up her seventh goal of the season and again assisted by Cortney Staniszewski. Erica Sheaffer also picked up an assist on that game tying goal. Neither team could break this tie so the game ended 2-2. This did in fact end the Pioneers 13 game win streak but after trailing the no. 7 ranked Continentals for most of this game and then scoring 2 big goals late, most would say this was a win. This brought the pioneers to 14-1-2 on the season.

The Pioneers will be home this weekend for a two game series against Lebanon Valley College. Games will be taking place Friday, Jan. 27 at 4 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 28 at 2 p.m.