By ROBERT CHALUPNY

For the Call

Oakville Senior High School varsity hockey fans can cheer some more and let out a sigh of relief that their Tigers still are winning and skating their way toward the ultimate prize in high school hockey, the Challenge Cup.

The Tigers returned to their winning ways with a 3-1 victory over Fort Zumwalt West on Jan. 19, improving to 13-3-3. The win came after ties against Lindbergh and Chaminade. But Oakville head coach Derek Stephens told the Call his players took away some positives from the ties.

“The games that we tied were tough anyway,” he said. “I mean Lindbergh is always going to be tough late in the season because it’s a division opponent and Chaminade, they were ranked like third. Going in, we knew that was going to be a tough game. So overall, some positives to take away.”

In addition, Stephens said he was excited to see his players step up their game a little bit, particularly in the net.

“Overall, I was kind of proud of the guys who stepped up. Our goaltender, who doesn’t get a whole lot of playing time, he had to play on Monday night (and) he stepped up big time,” Stephens said.

Starting goaltender Zach Jost suffered a thumb injury the previous weekend and will return this weekend for the final two regular season games.

“We knew that Blake (Chapman) could do a good job for us and we wanted to rest Zach (Jost), especially with the importance of the playoffs coming up. So we want to make sure he’s kind of 100 percent going in,” Stephens said.

The win over Zumwalt West was important for the Tigers, especially from a momentum standpoint.

“Thursday night (Jan. 19) was our Senior Night and we just had to … kind of regather and get back to winning,” the Oakville coach said. “We actually started out a little slow. We went down 1-0.

“I think really what ended up happening is we had some mental lapses and after the first period we were down 1-0 … I said to the guys, ‘You’ve got to wake up — I mean every game from here on out. Every team, they look at our record and they know we’ve been doing pretty well, and they get fired up and they know they’ve got to bring their best.'”

The pep talk propelled the Tigers to score three in the second period and hold on for the win. Scoring for the Tigers were Ryan Basgall, Tommy Heinzman and Nicholas Markus.

However, plenty of penalties were called in the second and third periods, forcing the special teams to really step up and play the bulk of the ice time.

“It wasn’t as clean of a game as I would have liked, but we got the job done and came away with the two points, so it was good,” Stephens said.

On Saturday, the Tigers prevailed 1-0 over Suburban Southwest Conference rival Marquette in the Shaw Park Winter Classic.

The Tigers are set to face off against Marquette at 7 p.m. today — Jan. 26 — at the Kennedy Recreation Complex.