North nips Blue Jays

GRAND FORKS — For the third straight year Fargo North got the best of Jamestown in the quarterfinals.

It was far from effortless, but the defending state champions’ survived the Blue Jays after the No. 2-seeded Spartans posted a 2-1 win over Jamestown during the North Dakota state girls hockey tournament on Thursday at Olympic Arena.

Fargo North coach Kris Dougherty wasn’t surprised by No. 7-seeded Jamestown’s gritty play.

“Jamestown doesn’t quit and they have some pretty good players that play well together,” Dougherty said. “It’s the state tournament and you’re going to have games like this. The fun part about this is we came away with the win.”

It was another bitter pill to swallow for the Blue Jays, who pushed the Spartans for three full periods.

“The heart our girls show was the talk of the rink tonight after the game,” JHS coach Brad Schaack said. “What they do with what we have is amazing. You couldn’t be prouder of a bunch of girls.”

The two teams skated to a scoreless first period in which the Spartans outshot the Blue Jays 12-4.

North’s Sam Hagen scored at the 4 minute, 44 second mark of the second period, but Jamestown didn’t let the Spartans own the lead long.

Jamestown junior forward Stephanie Kamlitz took the puck coast to coast and got a shot past North goalie Kayli Stenstrom two minutes after Hagen’s goal.

Both teams had several scoring chances the rest of the period, but Stenstrom and Jamestown goalie Carissa Finck each held the offenses in check. North outshot Jamestown 17-12 in the second period.

North senior Mara Teschendorf, who had several shots go wide of the net early, quickly capitalized and gave the Spartans a 2-1 lead slamming home a rebound past Finck.

“Whenever (Teschendorf) came up I was saying, ‘defense take her outside, take her outside; don’t let her get a slap shot,’” Finck said. “I thought I handled myself pretty well. It was nice to go out there and give it my all.”

The Blue Jays (11-12-1), still in search of their first state-tournament win, get another chance tonight in a loser-out game against Bismarck (15-9). Game time will be around 7:30 p.m. The two teams met twice with each winning on the road. The Jays defeated the Blizzard 3-0 in Bismarck Jan. 20.

“The girls will have some confidence. Bismarck is definitely a good team, but we’re going to go in there and give it heck and see what happens,” Schaack said.

For the boxscore look in the scoreboard.

State hockey tournament

At Grand Forks

Quarterfinals

Fargo North 2, Jamestown 1

Jamestown 0 1 0 — 1

Fargo North 0 2 0 — 2

First period

No scoring.

Second period

1, FN, Hagen, (Betsy Pladson), 4:44. 2, J, Stephanie Kamlitz, 6:42. 3, FN, Mara Teschendorf, (Star Garrett), 16:03 (pp).

Third period

No scoring.

Goalie saves: FN, Kayli Stenstrom 4-11-4–19. JHS, Carissa Finck 12-15-11–38.

Tags: jays, hockey, sports