Austin head girls hockey coach Troy Holtz is only a few weeks into his first season with the Packers and he’s already got his team buying into longer practices and getting out of their comfort zones.

Holtz ran the Packers through two weeks of two and half hour practices, starting the season with a strong workload and he’s already put the team’s lone senior Jordyn McCormack, who has played defenseman and forward in her varsity career, at goalie.

McCormack went into her softball catcher’s stance in net in a scrimmage against Fairmont recently and she held her own — allowing just two goals.

“It was a very different perspective of the game. I did play it when I was way younger and it definitely is a hard position and you’ve got to give our goalies credit for doing it,” McCormack said. “It was fun. I don’t think I would prefer to do it, but if he really needed me to do it, I’d be willing to step up and do it again.”

Holtz was the head coach of the Austin boys hockey team for a four-year stint in the early 2000s, but since then he’s been coaching youth hockey and watching the play of his daughters Kate, who is on this year’s Packer team, and Lily, who is playing at St. Scholastica.

“I’ve been watching this team for quite some time and I’ve had a chance to coach all of the older girls at some point in youth hockey. It’s exciting to be a this level. I just enjoy putting in a lot of time,” Troy said. “I love coaching hockey. I spend oodles of time here. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to coach these girls ever since I’ve been done with the boys. It’s been fun. I think we’re the last team to play a game in the state, but I really like that. We didn’t have to rush them into anything. For some of these girls, I’m their third head coach (in varsity). The slow break in has really worked out pretty well for us.”

The Packers will open their season when they host Rochester John Marshall at noon on Saturday. It will be a chance for Troy to get a better look at his roster — although he has a pretty good idea of what the team is capable of. He coached many of the current players at the 10U level and he’s been in the stands as a parent for the Packer girls over the past few years.

“The development they’ve had is unbelievable,” Troy said. “Cassie Davidson is a more complete defenseman than we’ve ever seen before, Megan Schultz is fantastic and some of these kids have really ascended as they’ve gotten older. We’re putting a lot on our sophomore class.”

McCormack is excited to play under Troy’s leadership this season in her final year with the Packer girls hockey team.

“I think he’s really determined to get our younger girls up to speed with the varsity level,” she said. “He’s really been committed these past few weeks and I think he’s really optimistic about how the season will go. It’s nice that he’s got a lot of confidence in us, even though we lost a lot of our team from last year.”

Austin finished with a record of 10-14-1 overall last season.