NEW ULM — New Ulm High School girls head hockey coach Jeremy Reed said that their scrimmage Saturday in Willmar with Litchfield-Dassel/Cokato, Willmar and St. Cloud went well.

“What we wanted to do is find out how well the girls would adapt to each other,” he said. “We also introduced our defensive coverage on Thursday, so we worked on it. There is more to do, but we wanted them to have a foundation of it going into the scrimmage. We really wanted to see them compete and find out who worked well with who.”

Reed said that he liked the play of all of his players on Saturday.

“Their compete level was high,” he said. “And what was really good was that our younger players got better in each of the scrimmages. Our returning players worked well with the different people. They communicated with the younger players.”

Reed said that all of the scrimmages were pretty defensive.

“We have not spent a lot of time in practice yet on the offensive side,” he said. “We go into those scrimmages looking for their natural ability and instincts. We had some very nice plays from Maddy Olson and Tristyn Wollner — we did put some pucks in the net. Callie Haugen, a seventh-grader had a scrimmage that stands out in my mind — it was pretty impressive. On the offensive side she knows what to do with the puck.”

Reed said that he liked what he saw in how comfortable the younger players started to get as the scrimmages progressed.

“That experience really helped them understand what to expect,” he said. “Our scrimmages against Litchfield and St. Cloud were fast and intense and game speed.”

Reed said that this week in practice they will work on face-off coverages and getting into their forecheck.

“My concerning part right now is that we really did not do a good job of getting into the attack on the forecheck,” Reed said. “We kind of sat back and waited. We have a lot to do before we open up at Dodge County on Saturday.”