On Saturday, Feb. 2nd, Girls Hockey lost to the Braintree Wamps 3-1, making their record 12-3-1. The lone goal was scored by senior captain Olivia Malone.

“Olivia Malone came up big with getting us our goal, but overall the whole team played pretty strong and worked hard,” senior captain Meghan Hamilton said.

Despite the single goal, the Lady Rebels did not have difficulty in taking shots. The challenge was finishing them.

“Overall I thought the offense did a good job with keeping the pressure on the opposing defense and working the puck down low in the first period,” junior Catie Martin said. “But throughout the game our number one weakness was that we struggled to put the puck on net and snag the rebounds that were there.”

The Rebels and the Wamps were an even match all through the first period, keeping the game scoreless on both sides, but that streak was broken when Braintree’s Maggie Churchill scored the first of three goals four minutes into the second period.

Malone scored seven minutes later, but Braintree put in two more, one less than a minute later and another in the third period. Regardless of the loss, the Lady Rebels remain unfazed.

“Obviously losing to Braintree for the second time is hard but we played significantly better this time around and we are all mostly happy with our effort,” Martin said. “Braintree is a well coached, aggressive team and we just came up short.”

Throughout the game, both teams possessed high intensity and aggressiveness, because junior Abby Duffy’s hair was cut off by a Braintree player’s skate the last time the two teams met, creating a rivalry. The intensity led to an abundance of penalties.

“I think overall we did a poor job of keeping our composure towards the end of the game,” Martin said. “As the game got more aggressive we started to retaliate, which led to unnecessary penalties and having to play shorthanded forced us to play more as individuals and not as a team.”

Looking forward, Girls Hockey has already qualified for tournament, so their next goal is to win the Herget Division.

“I think this game kind of put us at risk for one of our goals, which was to win the Herget,” Malone said. “But other than that I still think we are in a pretty good place and we can only go up from here.”

The Lady Rebels will play Natick tonight, Feb. 6 at 8:00 at Rodman Arena in Walpole.