Middlebury defeated Colby 12-5 Saturday on a sunny, but cold and blustery day on Kohn Field. The field crew did a great job with snow removal on Friday as we had an inch or two accumulation between 11:00am and 1:00pm. They had the field cleared for our 4:00 practice. There were a couple more hours of snow on Saturday before the game, but it never accumulated on the field, it just removed a couple years from my life due to stress.

The Colby game was a good opener for us. We were smothering on defense, giving up 3 of the 5 goals late in the game. When we did give up goals it was by not executing fundamentals, giving up the top side dodge by an attackman coming from behind and giving up the right hand dodge by a middie up top. Krieger was excellent in and out of the goal. Making solid saves and then making himself one of our best offensive options with his outlet passes.

On offense our shooting and occasionally our execution was disappointing, but not to the extent that it would cause alarm. I think it was more a factor of first-game mistakes. The Colby goalie was very good against us for the second year in a row and we needed to shoot better to pull away faster than we did. Charley Howe led us on the day with 4 goals and 2 assists while Mike Saraceni and Nick Bastis chipped in 2 apiece. We had a bunch of slow break opportunities, too many of which ended on a poor shot or stickwork mistake. Having said that, we moved the ball well at times and did a great job pushing the ball up the field to create those break situations.

We will need to execute better in a hurry as we face Springfield at Springfield, 4:00 on Wednesday. Springfield returns virtually all of their top players from their 2003 NCAA playoff team. We had a close game in the playoffs last year, beating them 11-9. They have 3 outstanding attackmen and 2 lines of very good middies. Their strength is balance on offense with a couple of star attackmen. They are solid on defense and outstanding on face offs. It will be a big challenge and one we are looking forward to after not being tested too much in our scrimmages and opener.