It was the semifinal round, just one game away from making it to the top three. Center Colleen Cook (10) slid to the middle of the ice, bent her knees, and kept her eyes on the puck before her, ready to faceoff. Her gaze darted from her opponent in front of her, then to the referee. The whistle shrilled, echoing off the walls as she proceeded to slam her stick on the ice.
Goldrush, Cook’s hockey team, placed third at the Girls Tier II 16U USA Hockey National Championship in St. Louis, Missouri, March 24-29. Her team progressed through multiple games leading up to nationals, facing off against 13 teams total in states and districts.
In order to have a shot at making it to nationals, the team first had to place well at states.
“Usually, all the good players in California kind of migrate to one team, and that was my team this year,” Cook said. “For all of our [district] games, we won 10-0, or 5-0.”
After winning states, Goldrush advanced to the District competition in Las Vegas, where they faced off against a team they had previously won against. Despite this, Cook said things weren’t looking good for Goldrush in the early part of the game.
“We were down 1-0 all [throughout the] first and second period,” Cook said. “Then in the third period, we came back and scored two goals. It was just so crazy and intense, because I was like, I’m not losing to this team, because we had already beat them by 5-1 earlier. We were like, ‘Why are we losing?’ Us winning just felt really, really good.”
The team managed to place second in districts overall, securing a spot at nationals. However, what the team didn’t know was that they were moved up to a whole new bracket.
“First place goes to the top division, and then the second place goes to the lower division, except we got bumped up to the higher division because they thought we were going to be too good from the lower division,” Cook said. “Now, we’re playing the top 10 teams in all of the U.S. in our bracket, which is really nerve-wracking to think about. But I think we’ve played a lot of really strong hockey leading up to this. We played a lot of competitive games that we played really well in. We were just gonna do our best and get as far as we can.”
Goldrush’s hockey program has a long history of great boys teams that have made it to nationals, but their girls teams have never placed as well. Cook wanted to change that.
“[Goldrush] has had boys teams that have gone to nationals, but they didn’t have any girls teams until three years ago,” Cook said. “Last year, the [16U team] went to nationals, but they didn’t do that well, so we’re hoping that this year we can do a lot better than them and, hopefully, bring back our name.”
Goldrush won against the first two teams they played, but things began to go downhill from there. In the semifinal round, Cook found herself competing against one of the best teams in their division, the Connecticut Polar Bears.
“[The team consisted of] girls who play at hockey academies and hockey prep schools,” Cook said. “Sadly, we had to beat them to move on, and we lost to them again, 2-0, but it was such a close game.”
Although the team didn’t play to their best ability, Cook said she believes that Goldrush is capable of achieving great things in the future.
“We just didn’t play our best,” Cook said. “We weren’t moving the puck like we should be, and aren’t in the right spots. We are all very skilled players, we just weren’t playing to our highest potential.”
According to Cook, leaving nationals was especially bittersweet.
“It was so crazy because that was our last game of the season, and we kind of went into it thinking ‘This is gonna be a hard game, we’re probably gonna lose,’ which we probably shouldn’t have,” Cook said. “It was just a lot of fun being with those girls for the last game.”
Cook attributed much of her growth in the sport to her coach, Dean Caban, who has coached teams at the highest level.
“He’s probably one of the best coaches in all of Western America,” Cook said. “Pretty much every single one of his teams has gone to nationals at least once. He also coaches guys that are in the NHL. He is such a good coach, and he’s really just helped me build my skills as a player. He’s helped me grow so much, and I’m just really grateful for him.”
