GRAND FORKS, N.D. — Women’s hockey has begun their season 0-2-2, thus far and today marks their first WCHA match against Bemidji State.

The Sioux’s season began with a 3-1 win over Manitoba in an exhibition game Sept. 29, they then opened their regular season with Boston University at the Nike Bauer Women’s Classic.

The Sioux tied Boston, 2-2 in an evenly fought overtime match, with goals coming from freshman forward Stephanie Roy and sophomore defender Casssandra Flanagan.

The next game in the tournament was against Northeastern, where the Sioux allowed two third period goals in for the tie. Goals came again from Flanagan and sophomore forward Jodi Holland.

Head coach Brain Idalski thought the two games were a good showing for the Sioux.

“I am happy with the effort and happy that we competed very hard,” he said. “We were doing a lot of good things that weekend.”

Next up for the Sioux was Renssselear, whom they lost to, on the road, 1-3 and 1-6.

“I think at any level playing on the road is difficult, especially with a team that has not had a lot of success lately,” Idalski said.

According to Idalski, team didn’t perform very well against RPI and that the two starting weekends were polar opposites.

“I would say that our energy was a lot better the first weekend,” he said. “We just played with a lot more enthusiasm; we still made mistakes, but our effort and energy that we displayed made up for them.”

“At RPI we didn’t have that enthusiasm, and had a lot of mistakes and undisciplined play, which just cant happen when you are on the road,” Idalski said. “I don’t think there would be a kid on the team that would argue with that.”

Next up

With the two ties and the two loses to start the season, Idalski wants to go into the next game with Bemidji playing more disciplined.

“We need to focus on doing the little things well; like playing the D-Zone well and not turning the puck over and competing all over the ice,” he said. “If we that, we are going to do very well this weekend.”

Thus far the team is doing everything to make themselves better and not focusing on last year when the team went 3-31-2, according to Idalski.

This year’s captain is sophomore defender Ashley Lynch, who was named to the All-WCHA Rookie Team last season and tied the team record for goals by a defensemen.

Assistant captains are junior forward Randi Motsko, junior forward Casie Hanson and junior defensemen Kelsey Fletcher.