Charlotte McAdam was the Wild Women's MVP against Nottingham (Photo by Paul Breeze)
Sunday 3rd May 2026 – WNIHL Division
1 North: Widnes Wild Women 1 – Nottingham Vipers 8
The Widnes Wild
women’s team rounded off their rollercoaster Division 1 season with a keenly
contested and highly entertaining 1-8 defeat to Nottingham Vipers at Planet Ice
Widnes on Sunday.
The game saw a WNIHL debut
for Grace Teinert and a welcome return for experienced player Jennifer Greenwood,
who had missed most of the season through injury.
Despite the eventual
scoreline, this was far from being a one-sided game and featured plenty of end
to end hockey with lots of chances for both sides.
The Wild Women actually
took the lead in the 3rd minute with a well-taken goal from former
Belgium international player Leen de Decker.
This was important,
not only as it opened the scoring for the home team, but it also saw off the
spectre of a record breaking goal-less spell that had been hovering since the
Wild Women had been shut out in their two previous games. Back in the 2021/22 season – which was the
last time that they had played at this higher Division 1 / WPL level – they
managed to go three games in a row without scoring at all and went 208 minutes
and 48 seconds in total without a goal across 5 games.
De Decker’s goal
against Nottingham at 2.52 on Sunday meant that the current season’s goal
drought only amounted to 159 minutes and 32 seconds, and another unwanted
record was happily averted.
Unfortunately, the lead
only lasted 21 seconds as Nottingham immediately equalised and then fired
themselves in front just 13 seconds after that.
The rest of the period
played out goal-less - with Widnes giving as good as they got – and the score
remained 1-2 at the first break.
The second period started
badly for the Wild Women as Nottingham edged further ahead just 54 seconds in
and went on to score 3 more unanswered goals to lead 1-6 at the second
interval.
The game got scrappier as
it went on – with Nottingham adopting an unnecessarily robust approach on a
number of occasions - and both sides picked up niggly penalties, which affected
the ebb and flow.
The Vipers scored again 13
seconds into the third period and added their 8th goal on 56
minutes. This was an odd one as the same player who scored the goal was also
handed a 2 minute misconduct penalty at the same time – a rather rare
occurrence.
Widnes had a powerplay
opportunity in the dying seconds but were unable to end the game with a
flourish and the match finished at 1-8 to the visitors.
The MVP (Most Valuable Player) awards for Wild Women home
games are once again this season being sponsored by niche publishers Ice Hockey
Review and, as well as the usual trophies, the winners also receive special
edition pens handcrafted and donated by Anthony Stock.
The awards were presented by the Wild Women General Manager Karyn
Cooper and went to Jemma Dilley for Nottingham and Charlotte McAdam for Widnes.
Sunday’s result means that
the Wild Women finish the season in 6th place out of 6 teams in
Division 1 with two wins from their 20 league games – two wins more than they achieved
the previous time that they played at that level.
