Adirondack Northstars 14U Wins USA Hockey National Championship

IRVINE, CA — The Adirondack Northstars 14U AA girls hockey team traveled west last week, and returned home as national champions.

The Northstars beat Team Colorado 2-1 in the championship game of the 2023 Chipotle-USA Hockey Girls Tier II 14U 1A National Championship, the first national title won by the program. Head coach Ben Marcantonio said the win was “surreal.”

“Honestly, it still feels surreal,” said Marcantonio. “The past week has been a whirlwind.”

The team played six games in total from March 30 to the championship on April 3, winning all six. The Northstars defeated teams from Wyoming, Texas, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Tennessee prior to the championship victory over Colorado.

Marcantonio said entering the tournament, he told the team to simply “play their game.”

“They’ve been playing great all year long, and I didn’t want to put any added pressure on them to feel like they had to perform,” Marcantonio said. “So they just went out there and played their style of play, and force what we know and what we do best on other teams.”

Marcantonio said the team plays a very similar style to the Adirondack United varsity girls high school team, who are coached by Northstars 16U head coach Jeff Willis. 11 of 18 players on the 14U team were members of the United squad this winter, Marcantonio said.

“(Jeff) and I kind of have the same philosophy. We don’t really stop playing offense,” said Marcantonio. “The best defense is a good offense. We pressure other teams to make mistakes when they’re in their defensive zone and capitalize on those. When we are in our own zone, we don’t give the team time and space to actually make a play or make a decision.”

In the title game, Queensbury’s Emily MacAuley scored both goals for the Northstars, initially giving Adirondack a 1-0 lead in the first period before making it 2-0 early in the second. 

Team Colorado responded with a strong third period, and cut it to 2-1 with 3:36 remaining, but the Northstars held strong defensively in the final minutes to lock up the national championship. Marcantonio said the win was “a total team effort.”

“Emily was the goal scorer for both of our goals in that championship game, but our team really rallied around each other and made a commitment to each other to finish out the game as strong as we started,” said Marcantonio. 

Marcantonio said Adirondack’s ability to buckle down defensively in the final moments “says a ton” about the character of the team.

“We have seventh-graders, eighth-graders, and ninth-graders on the team,” Marcantonio said. “Their ability to adapt to adverse situations, it just shows me how much heart (they have) and how much they wanted this for each and every one of those girls on that team.”

The team was recently honored at Cool Insuring Arena during the Adirondack Thunder’s 4-1 win over the Maine Mariners on April 7. Marcantonio said the championship is “very special” for the squad.

“It’s a special group of girls. They worked hard all year long,” Marcantonio said. “They constantly came to work. … They definitely were all-in when it came down to the commitment to the game and to each other.”