BRANTFORD — The Southwood Sabres dined on defeat a week earlier and weren’t in the mood to feast on it again.

The hard-working Sabres rebounded from last week’s setback in the Waterloo County girls hockey league’s championship game to take top spot on Thursday at the two-day Central Western Ontario tournament.

The Sabres earned a spot in the March 23-26 Ontario championship in Ottawa with their 2-1 win over the Guelph Collegiate Gaels at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre.

The Sabres fell 3-1 to the Elmira Lancers in Cambridge last week and used the result as ammunition in Brantford.

“That motivated us a lot. We got a taste of losing before it put us out for the season,” said Sabres goalie Alex Mugford, who was outstanding against Guelph.

“It was because we lost and we all had the taste of losing and knew we didn’t want that to happen again so it motivated us.”

Southwood had suffered only two losses in its first two seasons of existence and both brought outstanding campaigns to a screeching halt. They fell two years ago in the CWOSSA title game and last year at OFSAA. They had been undefeated in WCSSAA play for three seasons until last week’s setback to Elmira.

“It would have been really nice to have a rematch with (Elmira), for sure, but Guelph worked really hard to beat them and we knew they were a really good team because we all know what Elmira is capable of doing,” said Mugford.

The Lancers’ season came to an end in a semifinal game on Thursday as they fell 5-4 to Guelph. Kaitlin Doering scored two goals in a losing effort while Erin Zach and Kayleigh Esbaugh added singles for Elmira, which gave up two third-period goals.

In the title game, Jocelyn St. Clair scored both of Southwood’s goals against Guelph. Both came with St. Clair parked at the corner of Gaels goalie Meagan Carty’s crease.

Cori Moretti scored Guelph’s goal as a point shot bounced off her pants and went past Mugford.

The Southwood goalie was perfect after that and made her biggest save on a third-period breakaway shot by Alex Chisholm. Mugford was piled on by teammates at game’s end and received the biggest cheers when the players received their medals.

The Sabres advanced to the title game with a 5-4 win over Centre Wellington of Fergus. Maizie Laking, Danica McLeod, Jessica Staats, Cait Woolner and St. Clair did the scoring in that game.

Next up is OFSAA, where the Southwood players, said Mugford, hope to win a medal after the disappointment of failing to reach the semifinals last year.

Head coach Steve Stockford is just looking forward to the trip.

“It’s like when we came here for CWOSSA,” he said.

“Let’s see what we can do. We’re just going to have fun and try as hard as we possibly can and see what happens.

“We don’t have the highlight reel players. We win games as a team.”

Unlike last year, when Stockford went on vacation during the March break, the coach said he’ll schedule a handful of practices between now and OFSAA to keep his players sharp.