Hopkins Helps Ridgetown Girls Skewer Lancers in Kent Final

It’s not often one of Chatham-Kent’s smaller teams walks through the bigger competition to win a major Kent Championship. That’s just what the Ridgetown Royals girls hockey team did Wednesday night however as they defeated the UCC Lancers 3-1.

UCC finished the regular season with an impressive 9-0-1 record, however their lone tie came against Ridgetown one month ago, as the team’s fought to a 2-2 draw.

Wednesday at Memorial Arena in Chatham, Ridgetown jumped out to a 2-0 lead after two periods, putting the UCC Lancers in a hole they could not recover from.

Karleigh Hopkins scored the opening two goals for Ridgetown before UCC got on the board in the third period. Jessalyn Martin had the lone UCC Lancers goal.

With the pressure on in the dying seconds, Hopkins scored her third goal of the game, completing the hat trick, on the empty net to put the UCC Lancers away.

Hopkins also scored for Ridgetown in their 2-0 victory over the LKCS (Dresden) Cardinals in the Kent semi-final.

Ridgetown will face their SWOSSAA opponent Monday.