With playoff hopes on the line this weekend against a team that embarrassed the Lady Icers earlier this year, there should be no shortage of motivation for the Penn State women's ice hockey club.
The Lady Icers will host No. 3 University of Rhode Island this weekend to close out its regular season. The first two contests saw URI beat the Lady Icers by a combined 19-1 score.
"We're training to see the look on [URI coach] Beth McCann's face when we hopefully win," senior co-captain Jess Waldron said.
For this go around against URI, Penn State picked up a win against California University of Pennsylvania the week before meeting the No. 3 team in the ACHA.
The last time Penn State played URI, the Lady Icers were reeling from a 5-1 home loss against the same Vulcans squad.
But that means nothing to the team now.
"Everyone's really up from Friday," senior Krissy Heard said. "We need to keep that intensity."
To keep that intensity, during Tuesday night's practice, head coach Mo Stroemel stopped a lackadaisical shooting drill and had his team gather around him. While slapping his stick on the ice, Stroemel's words boomed throughout the Greenberg Ice Pavilion.
"Never, ever, ever, ever give up! Not here, not anywhere! Never give up!" he hollered to his team.
On the next effort of the same drill, one forward slipped into the net and knocked it loose. Stroemel skated over, made sure the fallen player was OK, then pointed and grinned.
"Get to the puck!"
Stroemel conducted the practice with hopes of preserving a key ingredient from the club's most recent victory.
"Competitiveness," Stroemel said. "The fact we didn't give up and we played very hard, that alone can make a difference for us.
"If you get soft at any position, you're sunk. [URI is] that good. They're the No. 3 team in the country. It only gets a little better than them."
Stroemel has also been using his time off the ice to prepare his team for its crescendo of a regular season finale.
At the beginning of the year, the head coach spent a lot of practices getting his Lady Icers prepared to just play hockey -- instead of preparing for a single opponent.
Now, with the season wound down to one last home weekend, the coach is singing a different tune.
"We've got to get their minds around literally winning one game at a time," Stroemel said.
