The Canada West championship banner belongs to the University of Manitoba Bisons women’s hockey team.
Lauren Taraschuk made 18 saves as the Bisons defeated the University of Saskatchewan Huskies 5-2 Saturday night at Max Bell and swept the best-of-three final in two straight.
“It’s undescribable,” said first-year defenseman Lauren Warkentin. “We’ve worked so hard all year and we just stuck to our plan. It worked out for us. It’s just amazing.”
Charity Price, Alana Serhan and Natasha Kostenko scored second period goals for the Bisons who saw that 3-0 lead disappear when Huskies forward Kaitlin Willoughby beat Taraschuk with 4:45 left in the middle frame and again 78 seconds into the third period.
Jordyn Zacharias restored the Bisons two-goal lead when she scored with 4:56 remaining in regulation.
Courtlyn Oswald added an empty netter with 72 seconds left on the clock.
The Bisons won the series opener 1-0 in overtime on Friday night and Warkentin said they stayed focused when Saskatchewan made it a 3-2 game early in the third period of game two.
“The emotions were high,” said the Steinbach product who drew an assist on Serhan’s goal. “The tension was obviously there but I kind of pushed it aside and we stuck to our plan and went with it. We kept pushing back and it worked well for us.”
Warkentin and the rest of the Bisons will play for the U Sports National Championship which will be held in London, Ontario from March 15-18.