Breck wins first banner

As the extra minutes dragged on in Saturday's Class 1A girls' hockey championship game, so did the frustration on Breck's bench.

The Mustangs' players had wide-open shots, shots from the blue line and shots off odd-man rushes. No dice. South St. Paul freshman goaltender Sydney Conley looked like a grizzled veteran on darn near everything.

Yet Breck players stuck to coach Chris Peterson's game plan: Crash the Packers' net hard, and throw everything at it.

"We were trying the kitchen sink, too," Peterson said.

It eventually paid off.

Forwards Leah Schwartzman and Prentice Basten joined defenseman Milica McMillen on another odd-man rush toward Conley. Despite a sliding last-ditch effort by South St. Paul's Sam LaShomb to break up the play, Schwartzman took a pass from Basten and popped it over a sprawling Conley at the 10-minute, 55-second mark of the first double overtime in championship game history to give top-seed Breck a 3-2 victory.

"I really wasn't thinking," Schwartzman said. "I was just crashing the net like coach always says. I didn't really see anything because they all jumped on me before I could see it in the goal.

That Schwartzman notched the game-winner should come as no surprise. She's got a knack for this sort of thing, after all.

Schwartzman, who got Breck on the board 4:40 into the third period Saturday, scored game-tying goals late two days apart against South St. Paul and Benilde-St. Margaret's early in the season.

"The cardiac kid," Peterson said.

Heart-stopping moments happened on both ends of the rink before the game was decided.

Breck had a goal waved off with five minutes left in the third period that would have made it a 3-1 game. After LaShomb scored a clean goal 1:02 later to tie it 2-2, teammates Lauren Wilcox and Brigette Miller failed to connect on a 2-on-1 opportunity in overtime.

Instead, the second-seeded Packers were forced to settle for silver medals for a second year in a row while Breck gets to hoist a first championship banner after making state five of the past six years.

"It finally happened," McMillen said. "It was overtime. It was adrenaline. It could have gone out, could have gone in. And it went in."