Jacks Drop Season Opener 2-0 To Forest Lake

Wes Vork-NSO

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Nov 10, 2012

Wes Vork-NSO

The winter sports season officially got underway on Saturday. The Cloquet-Esko-Carlton girls kicking things off with a hockey game against Forest Lake and although the Jacks played well by early season standards, they couldn’t recover from two quick first period goals and lost their home opener by a score of 2-1.

CEC opened the 2012-2013 season under the guidance of first year Head Coach Lance Horvat. Horvat is just the third coach in the programs history, but the third in nearly as many years after taking over for Mike Bushey. Bushy took over for longtime Head Coach Dick Bartholdi but left after a two year stint to pursue other interests.

“It would have been nice to not start out with an “L” but I think we will have a really good team this year,” Horvat told Northland Sports Online following the game. “We have great senior leadership, talented upperclassmen, and some younger kids who can play and will do a good job of filling some of our holes.”

The Jacks got down 1-0 when Kaitlyn VanTassel got the Lakers on the board at 2:22 of the first period with the assist going to Madi Nolan. Just under five minutes later at 7:10, Forest Lake made it 2-0 with an Alexa Bremmer goal. Bremmer was assisted by Kayla Brust and Becca Neumann.

“We had some breakdowns that led to a quick couple of goals,” Horvat explained. “I thought we played pretty good, solid hockey after that, but couldn’t get on the board.”

CEC’s best chance came with six minutes left in the first period when Emily Gustafson got behind the defense but her shot hit the crossbar. Fairly even play in the second and third period could not produce any results for either team with the game ending like the first period at 2-0.

The Jacks are now 0-1 on the season and will try again to get Horvat’s his first win on Friday when they host Roseville Area at Northwoods Credit Union Arena in Cloquet.

Wes Vork can be reached at wes@northlandsportsonline.com