Girls Hockey Team Headed To National Championships

WEST CHESTER, PA -- Vermont, here they come.

The Brick Hockey Club's girls 16UAA team scored five times in the final period and captured the Atlantic Amateur Hockey Association's Tier II championship with a 6-1 victory over the West Chester Quakers at the Ice Line Sunday.

The team, which has been together for a year, is the third Brick Hockey Club team to earn a berth in the national championships, and has reached nationals in just the second year of the girls program in the Brick club. The girls 16UAA national championships are scheduled to begin March 31 in Barre, Vermont. The team has players from several towns, including Woodbridge, Middletown, Howell, Somers Point, Cape May and Toms River as well as Brick.

Brick's 18UAA boys team played in the national championships in 2014, the last Brick Hockey Club team to go to the USA Hockey national championships.

Brick (20-10-3), which advanced to the division championship round with a bye by virtue of winning the Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey Association league title with an 8-1-1 record, had won Game 1 Saturday afternoon over the Quakers 2-0.

On Sunday, the Quakers came out hard and snuck one past Brick goalie Kat Brezniak for a 1-0 lead 7 minutes into the first period, coach Cindy Acropolis Toye said.

"It took a weird bounce over Kat's shoulder," Toye said. "She makes that save nine times out of 10."

Kyley Toye evened the score 2 minutes into the second period, carrying the puck through traffic and beating the Quakers' goalie to the wide side.

"We didn't play well in the first period," Cindy Toye said. And even after her daughter's goal, Brick was in dogfight, she said.

"It was a nail-biter," she said. "After the first period, it was a very back-and-forth game."

Until the third period, that is. Brick opened the period with 45 seconds remaining in a power play, Toye said, and made it pay off.

"We told the girls they had to come out strong and make the power play count," she said. Tabitha Franceschini got control of the puck and sent it to Erin Campbell, who sent a pass that Cassie Campbell one-timed past the Quakers' goalie.

"Their goalie was so good," Toye said, noting that Brick outshot West Chester 36-15. "She stood on her head."

Brick's Caitlyn Keenan of Howell scored back-to-back goals to make it 4-1, and while the momentum changed, Toye said Brick was still on edge.

"We still didn't feel comfortable," she said. But a goal by Karli Lafferty of Cape May sealed the deal and Brick tallied one more before skating off with the victory.

Toye said it will be a few days before Brick knows what team the girls will face and the schedule for the national championships. Fundraising will begin to help offset the team's costs.