With the final horn blaring in the background, the ConVal-Conant girls’ ice hockey team celebrated a milestone victory Tuesday afternoon. After a decade of toil and improvement, Tuesday’s 8-0 win over Kingswood set the Griffins’ program record for wins in a season and marked the first-ever shutout in ConVal-Conant history.

“It feels good,” said Griffin senior co-captain Makennah McPherson after the game. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a good season like this. First shutout – it feels really good. I mean, I’ve been here for four years and we’ve never had more than four wins in a season.”

In fact, the Griffins had only won four games total over that span coming into this season and didn’t expect to win any this year, as they filled out their roster with several players who had never played organized hockey before.

“With this crew at the beginning of the year, we had so many brand-new skaters,” head coach Chris Spingola said. “I was super concerned if we were going to win one. In the last four weeks, we’ve come together as a team, and I don’t know whether it was them hanging out off the ice or if it was the practices and how the practices are going, but they’ve really settled in and played well together.”

When McPherson and fellow senior co-captain Addie Lustenberger joined the Griffins as freshmen in the 2019-2020 season, ConVal-Conant was coming off another big milestone after winning a then-record three games in the previous year. In their freshman season, the Griffins lost a senior captain to injury for half the year; the next season was shortened due to COVID restrictions, and last year’s team went just 1-16-1. But amidst all the struggle, McPherson and Lustenberger were growing into leaders.

“I don’t know if they had a point in their first two years,” Spingola said. “Last year, they both came alive. I don’t know if it was because they got to that age where they said, ‘I’m the leader of this team now,’ but they’ve carried that so well. ... They stepped into the season, they knew they were going to have the C on their shirts. They knew they were leaders, and they’ve really dragged everybody up with them. There’s two massive holes to fill. They’re such good hockey players and they’re such good kids. That’s the thing I’m going to miss the most is really how they can control the locker room. They’re truly captains, which is awesome. So they’re gonna be missed greatly.”

All four of ConVal-Conant’s victories this season have come against Souhegan and Kingswood, and the Griffins certainly have those games circled on their calendars as their best chances to win. But the visiting Knights were far from rolling over on Tuesday afternoon, as they brought a physical, chippy game to Keene Ice and didn’t make the record-breaking victory easy. Kingswood goalkeeper Danika Chominski all but stood on her head to keep the game competitive despite the barrage of Griffin offense.

“They always fight hard,” Spingola said. “Their goalie played amazng.”

But it was ConVal-Conant first-year keeper Olivia Riley who took home the biggest accolades, as she kept Kingswood off the board to record the first-ever shutout in program history. With the shutout in sight, Spingola reined in the offense and stacked up the defense, and the Griffins responded by keeping the clean sheet.

“The defense really stepped up,” McPherson said. “They really worked hard.”

McPherson set up three of the Griffins’ goals Tuesday; Lustenberger put in a pair, including a blue-line rocket; newcomer Eliza Malia took a beating on her way to a pair of goals; freshman Sophia Spingola had a pair of her own, and Aubrey Niemela and Miranda Ellis scored one each. First-year senior Rylee Herr added an assist. 

ConVal-Conant (4-11) was set to play at Keene Wednesday night and then host Oyster River for a senior game season finale on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Keene Ice.

“It’s definitely bittersweet,” McPherson said. “I never thought I would be in this position my freshman year. I definitely wasn’t that good. So it is really nice to be able to put some goals in and win a couple of games with these ladies. … Going into this year, we didn’t think we were going to win a game, so it’s really cool to see these ladies – especially the new players, we have a lot of new players that have never even played hockey before – it’s really cool to see them work really hard and become the players that they have.”

]]>