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| Stephanie Drinkwater was the Wild Women’s MVP against Leeds (Photo by Paul Breeze) |
Sunday 13th April 2025 – WNIHL Division 2 North: Widnes Wild Women 2 – Leeds Roses 1
The Widnes Wild Women maintained their Division 2 North title challenge with a hard fought 2-1 win over Leeds Roses at Planet Ice Widnes on Sunday.
This was a very entertaining game to watch – with the result remaining in doubt until the very last seconds - and many observers agreed that it was quite possibly one of the best women’s matches ever seen at the Widnes rink.
Leeds opened the scoring with a goal on 9 minutes and the score remained 0-1 at the first period break. Widnes equalised on 24 minutes with a strike from Ruth Leopold and, despite chances for both teams, the score stood at 1-1 at the second interval.
This game was end to end action throughout, although the Roses had the edge in terms of shots on goal – out-shooting the Wild Women by 49 to 36 over the whole 60 minutes. However, they came up against Stephanie Drinkwater who was in fine form in the Widnes goal and made a succession of stunning saves, keeping out an impressive 48 of the 49 shots that she faced, for a 97.96 save percentage.
Widnes eventually took the lead on 47 minutes with a goal from Amanda Armstrong, setting up a nail-biting finale.
Despite the closeness of this game and its significance for the league standings, it was played in good spirit throughout, with very few penalties being awarded.
Just 4 minutes of penalties were handed out to each side over the course of the game and two each of these came in the third period when Widnes were defending their slender lead.
The Wild Women managed to fend off the Leeds assault when they were a player down and were unable to take advantage when the tables were turned with 6 minutes left to play.
The clock slowly ticked down and, despite a late flurry of pressure from Leeds, Widnes were able to hold on and record an important victory.
The MVP awards - sponsored this season by niche publishers Ice Hockey Review – were presented by match volunteer Lynda Bird and went to Kirsty Hodgins for Leeds and Stephanie Drinkwater for Widnes.
The Wild women now have 6 wins, three draws and one defeat from their 10 league games to date. The other teams in the mix for the league title have games to catch up on so the table standings for Division 2 are far from clear at present.
Widnes play their last home game of the season on Sunday 27th April when they take on Caledonia Steel Queens at Planet Ice Widnes. The game has a later than usual face off time of 5.45pm.
They then finish off their regular league schedule with an away game to Leeds Roses on 10th May – which will be played at Bradford Ice Rink due to a lack of available ice time at Leeds.
