Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Unionville rolls over W.C. East in opener
Freshman Douchette impresses with six-point night in 9-1 win
WEST GOSHEN >> She may be new to the Unionville girls hockey team, but there wasn’t a single person who didn’t learn Madison Douchette’s name by the end of the night Friday.
That’s because the freshman notched not only a hat trick, but also chipped in three assists in a 9-1 romping over West Chester East in a Inter-County Scholastic Hockey League girls varsity game at Ice Line.
“She’s a pleasure,” said Unionville coach Dave Elvin. “She fits in so well with the team. We haven’t missed a beat and it’s nice to have a player of that calibre join our team. She’s just a great kid. She’s very mature, very polite and works well with her teammates.”
Douchette opened the scoring for Unionville (10) just a mere nine seconds into the game when she pushed her way through two West Chester East (02) defenders after the puck drop on the Indians’ season opener and buried the puck behind goaltender Danielle Latare.
She tacked on her second less than a second before the horn sounded to end the first period and capped off the hat trick in the second.
“(The hat trick) was nice,” Douchette said. “I had a lot of good passes from my teammates.”
She made sure the game wasn’t all about her as the minutes ticked on.
Even when she had a perfect opportunity to bury her fourth of the night, she in- stead looked to share the puck with a pass over to teammate Allie Ward, who had two goals of her own on the night.
But Douchette wasn’t the lone player in a sharing mood as the entire team looked to set each other up.
“I love the fact that they look at each other to pass the puck,” Elvin said. “They love to make plays. That’s nice because it makes it a little bit easier to score goals when you get a goaltender moving from side to side.”
Latare put up a good fight in the first period, stopping 11-of-13 shots sent her way, but it wasn’t long before Unionville’s lethal offense took over and piled on seven goals over the next two frames.
“We know West Chester East,” Elvin said. “We played some tight games with them last year. We were thankful to have the puck moving so well and everyone had energy tonight,
which was good.”
Despite several members of Unionville having practice before the game, they never showed an ounce of exhaustion as the game wound on.
“More than half the team is on the varsity field hockey team and they’re going to States,” Elvin said. “They had their practice and then had everybody rushing to get over here. It was a little bit of a scramble to get started, but I was thrilled. They’re pumped and there was so much excitement on the bench.”
It had taken two weeks for Unionville to have its first game and both the girls and Elvin feel a bit of relief to get the first one finally out of the way.
“This was a late start for us,” Elvin said. “We’re glad to get out and get going. I think everybody was chomping at the bit to get to the first game.”