Kori Cheverie said she’s saving the best for last.

 

The fifth-year forward with the Saint Mary’s Huskies women’s hockey team will make her first and only trip to the CIS national championship as a player this week in Antigonish.

 

"I’m pretty excited. It’s the first time I’ve been to nationals," said the New Glasgow native, who led SMU with 19 goals and 30 points this season and ranks seventh all-time in the Atlantic conference with 137 points in 105 career games.

 

"There’s no better way to finish your fifth year than to go to nationals. It’s almost surreal.

 

"It’s so nice to go (to nationals) with the group of girls that we have. We get along so well. My main focus was getting our team to nationals and that’s what we have done. I’m really proud that we accomplished our goal. I was positive throughout the whole season that we would accomplish this. I was never concerned about not ever making it to nationals. We did everything we could to win."

 

The four-day, six-team championship opens Thursday afternoon at the Keating Millennium Centre. Saint Mary’s plays its first game Friday against the loser between McGill and Montreal on Thursday.

 

The Huskies have made it to Antigonish thanks to a surprising win over the Moncton Aigles Bleues in last month’s AUS championship in Moncton. It was SMU’s first victory over the Aigles Bleues in over two years.

 

The third-ranked Huskies knocked off the conference’s top two seeds, the No. 2 St. Francis Xavier X-Women and first-place Moncton, during the AUS playoffs en route to their first league title since 2004.

 

Cheverie said the conference championship has prepared her team for the CIS championship. This year, the AUS replaced its traditional win-or-go-home format with a two-game round-robin, similar to the CIS tournament.

 

"(The CIS) is a similar short tournament like the AUS," Cheverie said.

 

"We liked the setup at the AUS a lot better. It put a little less pressure on the teams and it prepared us well for the CIS. It gave us the mentality that if we work hard in every game, we can come out on top.

 

"We didn’t want to go to the CIS (championship) just because we made it to the final game of our conference," she added. "We wanted to go to the CIS because we are the best team in the AUS. Our coaching staff did a great job and prepared us so well for the playoff tournament. We knew everything about every team we were going to face and we knew how to shut them down."

 

Cheverie and linemate Lauren McCusker tied for the AUS playoff scoring lead with nine points.

 

But SMU head coach Lisa Jordan credited her No. 1 scoring line of Cheverie, McCusker and Kyla Thurston for their smothering defensive work against Moncton’s Marieve Provost, the AUS scoring leader and MVP.

 

Notes — Cheverie was one of three players from the AUS who helped lead Canada to a gold medal in women’s hockey at the 2009 Winter Universiade in Harbin, China, last spring. … Bill Kiely has been named the honorary chair of the CIS championship. Kiely has been a supporter and builder of St. F.X. athletics for the past 50 years in the areas of publicity, marketing, game announcing, writing and general advocacy.

 

( gmacdonald@herald.ca)

 

This page last modified Sunday, 07-Nov-2010 16:43:38 AST