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Steamboat Springs — Saturday is shaping up to be a festive day at the Howelsen Ice Arena, and the host for the bash is the Steamboat girls hockey team.

The team, high school athletes playing together without the recognition of the Colorado High School Athletics Association, will be playing the program's first home game, its season home opener and its final home game of the season. It's a grand introduction and senior night all rolled into one doubleheader.

"It's exciting because it's our first year playing high school hockey," said Annie Eggleston, one of three seniors playing her first and last game at Howelsen for the team. "We'll see if anyone shows up. I don't think they really take girls hockey seriously, but now it's more official."

Many of the girls started the season familiar with each other, having played together on other teams throughout their careers. Playing the high school schedule hasn't been an easy task, however. The team is five games deep into its initial season. It has managed to find one win, but far more often has run into tough, experienced squads in losses.

The high school team is comprised of students from Steamboat Springs High School, The Lowell Whiteman School and one player each from Moffat County and Hayden. Many of the team's varsity players focus solely on hockey, and many were a part of a U19 team during the winter.

That experience hasn't made for a smooth transition, as many of Steamboat's opponents pull athletes from a wider pool of players.

"To go from getting second in state (during the winter) to barely winning a game has been kind of rough. We expected to do well, and we were kind of shocked," Eggleston said.

Not that the struggles have sapped the team's spirit - plenty of the enthusiasm that helped launch the program remains.

"It's very cool to say we started the first high school girls team," Eggleston said.

Steamboat will play the West Jeffco Black Widows at 4:15 p.m. Saturday and then again immediately afterward.

Steamboat coach Alexa Pighini said the games present a challenge. The Black Widows are reigning champions of a tough league.

"The league is a lot more challenging than what we played in before," she said. "We're developing some systems and new plays that we haven't worked on.

"We have had more girls scoring, different girls scoring and we're building confidence in that respect."

Regardless of the outcome, playing at home will be a great feeling, she said.

"We really want this to be just like the high school team, just like what you've seen for the boys team," Pighini said. "We're trying very much to emulate that even though we're not associated with the high school."

And for the group of three seniors - Eggleston, along with her twin sister Allie and Jessica Fox - it will be a whole career of excitement wrapped in one day.

"As seniors, this is our last home game. We're going to play better," Fox said. "When we go to college, we could play on co-ed teams, but we won't ever be able to come back and play in high school again."