Girls Hockey 2025: Warroad outlasts Orono, seeks historic title
Posted: Friday, February 21, 2025 - 3:37 PM
Warroad’s quest for a state-record fourth consecutive Class A championship remains on course, but the latest chapter in the journey was saturated with drama.
The No. 3-seeded Warriors withstood intense offensive pressure from No. 2 Orono during the Class A semifinals of the Minnesota State High School League’s Girls Hockey State Tournament on Friday, Feb. 21, and even survived anxious moments that were a heartbeat from dashing the four-peat dream.
Warroad, however, found some magic of its own.
Ninth-grade defender Lindsey Lorenson played the heroine with one of the most dramatic goals in state tournament history when she scored 1 minute, 20 seconds elapsed in triple overtime to give the Warriors a 2-1 victory over the Spartans.
Lorensen ended more than 77 minutes of play when she gathered a loose puck at center ice. As she charged toward the goal, she danced around a defender while another was in pursuit from the near side. After splitting those defenders, she sent a sizzling wrister fly, a shot that made its way past Orono sophomore goalie Vivienne Anderson and into the upper right corner.
The goal triggered a massive celebration and allowed the Warriors to brief a sigh of relief.
“We will enjoy this for about five minutes,” Warroad head coach David Marvin said afterward. “Whoever we play in the final is going to be a really tough team. We’ve got to think about that.”
Top-seeded Dodge County played No. 4 Holy Angels played in the second semifinal. Warroad topped Dodge County a year ago in the championship game.
While Lorensen’s goal ended the drama on both sides of the ice, her teammate, junior goalie Payton Rolli, might have been the game’s top star. She faced 62 shots and made 61 saves in every imaginable way to provide ample time and opportunities for her teammates to find a way to end things with a goal.
Had the third overtime progressed, Rolli might have found her way into the state tournament record book. The single-game record for saves is 69 set by Mankato East/Loyola’s Andrea Schreiber in 2019.
Another state tournament-first was a possibility: Had the third overtime ended in a deadlock, per League policy, the game would have been suspended and completed early Saturday morning. That has not happened before during the television-era of the Girls Hockey State Tournament.
Long before Lorenson’s heroics, senior forward Zoe Lopez gave the Spartans (20-6-3) the early lead with a goal in the first period. But the Warriors (26-3-0) answered early in the second period on a tally by senior forward Kaiya Sandy.
