The Raiders enjoyed making it to the ECACHL quarterfinals last year, and are presently ranked 15th in the nation. The night before at the Raiders’ season opener, in Colgate’s own Starr Rink, the Rensselaer women surprised their opponents with an overtime win, 3-2. With both games going into exciting overtime play, RPI managed to improve their record to 3-0-1.

How RPI remained undefeated after a weekend when they were supposed to suffer blowout losses is mind boggling. On Friday night, they won 3-2 and on Saturday they played for a 1-1 tie.

The players’ and fans’ expectations keep rising. “The win and tie with Colgate was huge,” agreed devoted fans Eddie Knowles, vice president of student life, and wife Chris Knowles, known to the team as “Hockey Mom.” “For the so-called hockey pundits, we were supposed to be blown off the ice at Colgate and then spanked in front of our fans at home. Well, we proved the ‘experts’ wrong because this is a special group of young women who work hard as a team, refuse to believe the media, and will not give up regardless of the competition.”

Going into Friday’s game, the RPI women tried to keep the momentum from the previous weekend’s scoring barrage over Sacred Heart. They are turning heads as to just how far they could go this year.

Senior goalie Rosina Schiff gave top Colgate shooters Becky Irvine and Allison Paiano the brick wall treatment and Head Coach John Burke noted that “outstanding goaltending by Rosina” was a major factor in the upset. Schiff was happy with her teammates’ efforts. “Everyone gave 150 percent,” Schiff said. “We came out strong and surprised them.”

RPI’s regulation-time goals both came within two minutes of each other during the middle of the second period. Freshmen scored and assisted both goals. Defenseman Melissa Boik scored unassisted on a power play. Then Nicole McDonald scored with Laura Menken and Jamie-Lynn Stewart getting in on the play.

As the game went into overtime, Schiff felt the intensity of play really pick up. Barely two minutes into the sudden death overtime, RPI senior Kari Rabatin scored her first goal of the season. Rabatin was assisted by freshman Emily Donowick and sophomore Kelly Barbera to finish the upset of Colgate in their own arena.

While RPI beat the Raiders 3-2 on Friday, the team continued its successful ways Saturday night. As the crowd grew to nearly a thousand fans, Schiff noticed, “Seems like the whole campus is pumped up, we want to win in front of our fans, it’s awesome that they’re all pumped up!”

Knowles also observed the multitude of factors that came together: “a quality coaching staff, the Go Be Red presence, the pep band, students, staff, faculty, families, and Dr. Jackson in the stands—we are a force to be reckoned with. The “seventh player” was on the ice in the last four seconds of Saturday’s game and the players had the benefit of that extra spirit as an advantage.”

In spite of a lively RPI crowd, Burke saw room for improvement in his team’s performance.

“The biggest thing,” Burke noted, “is that they didn’t have their legs the first period.” Although most of the play was in Rensselaer’s defensive zone, the scoreboard did not reflect this lopsided intensity of play. After overcoming injuries and adjusting to a mixing up of the lines, “We got into the flow,” Burke remarked about what happened after the team overcame injuries and a juggled lineup. “The D-core played very well, the five freshmen and sophomores.”

Colgate’s goal early in the second period was the result of a confusing set of random bounces that unfortunately ended up in the goal behind a bewildered Schiff. This made the score 1-0 in favor of Colgate, but Rensselaer remained undaunted and, in fact, built on its momentum.

As RPI’s pep band pulled out “The Final Countdown,” the end of the third period saw Colgate scrambling feverishly to shut down RPI’s snipers and control the puck. At one minute left in the final period, Schiff was pulled and, combined with a Colgate penalty, put RPI in the six-on-four situation that would lead to Daniel’s heroic rebound-after-rebound play that resulted in a goal with just less than four seconds to the horn.

“It was all just a blur,” Daniel recalled of the final moments as the goal light flicked on and the crowd erupted.

Through the overtime session, Colgate dominated the play, but Schiff and her defense stood strong and made Daniel’s goal count. Schiff had a great weekend and finished it with several amazing stops in the last thirty seconds of overtime play to preserve the tie.

Although Colgate had the shot advantage this weekend, the quality of the shots was what mattered. In response to the unbalanced shots on net, Schiff said, “Look at the quality of shots; the [RPI] defense kept shots on the outside, they cleared out the rebounds—basically making me look good.”

This weekend was far better than “good” for Schiff, as she made 69 saves this weekend. Many of the saves were so good that the fans moaned when they saw the shots and couldn’t believe that she had made the stops.