Through change and conditioning, the ice hockey team is renovating their strategy to improve their play.
Players are required to pay for their own equipment if they wish to play hockey.
All the equipment required comes at a hefty price.
“If I were to buy all new equipment right now, it would properly be $1,500,” junior Pearson Egan said.
There are not as many players, putting them at a disadvantage.
According to head coach Ryan Uchniat, they do not have a full 18-player roster: only having 13 active players, with two of them having career-ending injuries.
The reason why more players are important is that it gives the starters and other players on the ice more time to rest.
“It gives other people a break,” Egan said. “You just have to play with the cards you’re dealt with.”
Some players don’t expect to have an impact on the team, but that all can change as they go on.
“Some folks aren’t anticipating much, but they wind up being key players in their junior and senior year,” Uchniat said.
Even though they are facing such challenges, Uchniat has a plan that he hopes will make up for that.
“A big strategy is simply not over-exerting,” Uchinat said. “A lot of it is positioning, where you’re attacking and picking and choosing and waiting for the right opportunity.”
Not only do they face a lack of players and high equipment prices, but they also don’t have much time to practice.
According to Egan, they have an hour-long practice once a week.
Even though they are going through these struggles, some players seem to be having a good time.
For Egan, he plays the sport because it’s fun and he enjoys it.
People have different motivations for playing hockey, with the lack of support they are getting, for junior Alex Archer, it’s about watching the pros play.
“I watched some professional games, and then I decided I wanted to play,” Archer said.
Archer finds it worth it because he gets better every time he plays.
There are many benefits that come with having such a small number of people on the team.
It makes it easier to build team chemistry and for everyone to be on the same page.
Egan mentions that the hockey team all grew up together.
He said that the hockey team all grew up together.
They also have team dinners once a year in the middle of the season. Throughout, a lot can be learned and gained from surpassing such challenges.
“There’s not just team success,” Uchniat said, there’s individual success, being able to accomplish things that were not anticipated.
People tend to find a sense of pride when they overcome a challenge or end up learning something valuable from it.
That is the case for Uchniat.
“Going up against a wide range of challenges and being able to succeed or at least learning from your failures, and in hockey, there’s a lot of failures,” Uchniat said.
Even though this team has faced many adversities, they keep their heads up and show up to practice and games every week.