By Mark Herbert
March 24, 2010

DAVIDSON-The Outlook/Hanley/Loreburn (OHL) Hooters continued their dominance over the Busch League Women's Hockey League, capturing its third straight year-end tournament win, March 14 in Davidson.

OHL defeated the Watrous Hockey Bags in the semi-finals, before a win over the Dundurn Wheat Queens to claim the crown once again.

As the best team in the league, the Hooters received an automatic bye into the second preliminary round, where they would face an upstart Davidson team, poised for a big upset.

In their second season, the Babes on Blades entered into the playoff tournament playing pretty strong and surprised the Colonsay Contacts with four goals to come away with a 4-2 victory and advance to the second round.

Davidson scorers were Lindsay Johnson with two and Terra Farden and Shalene Storey with one goal apiece.

Before making the inevitable trip to the tournament final, the Hooters would have to take on the hometown Babes, who to the delight of the home crowd kept the game close in the first half.

After falling behind 2-0 with less than 10 minutes left to play in the opening 30 minutes, the Blades cut the lead in half on a goal by Tracey Palmer with 3:40 left in the half.

Although Davidson managed to stay within striking distance of OHL, the two-time champs stormed out of the gate in the second half to separate themselves from the pack.

Less than a minute into the second half, Kim Bristow scored with a strong wrist shot from inside the left faceoff circle to extend the OHL lead to 3-1.

The Hooters almost got on the board again a few minutes later when Megan Silljer, who was camped out behind the Davidson net, feathered a pass to Yvonne Jess, positioned in front of the crease,  but Bonnie Arend stacked the pads to make a great save to keep the Hooters at bay.

Arend did all she could in the second half to keep Davidson close, but OHL continued to control the puck in the offensive zone and pepper the Blades' netminder with shots.

After Arend made a stop on a nice backhand, following end-to-end moves by Silljer, the Hooters came back down the ice a few seconds later and Silljer and Bristow connected on a one-timer to take a 4-1 advantage with 19:25 left in the game.

The two teams exchanged goals before the final buzzer and OHL went on to win the game 5-2.

Although the Babes are happy with the way they played over the weekend, they are disappointed they were unable to win the championship in front of their home fans.

"The fan support was just awesome," Karen McConnell said.

The leaderonline is a division of The Davidson Leader, Davidson, Saskatchewan, Canada.