Sabers taking one stride at a time

Thursday, February 18, 2010

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A few weeks ago, Souhegan High School girls ice hockey coach Ken DiCredico spoke with athletics director Chris Lavoie about the program’s future. He painted a murky picture. What the Sabers will need down the road, besides some wins, is an infusion of youth.

“I’ve already (told) Chris that when this chunk of juniors leaves, we might be in trouble,” he said.

And therein lies the numbers issue that the program will eventually have to deal with. It’s been a struggle all around in terms of wins (zero), and scoring goals (nine on the year, but that’s actually a big improvement) and the hope is that the lack of winning won’t deter players from competing and more players from joining the program down the road. In this, the third year of NHIAA sanctioned competition, the Sabers are still looking for their first legitimate victory (they had a win by forfeiture last year). Opponents already have the “W” marked down before they take the ice.

“You know it’s only human nature that if you keep getting beat down, you get discouraged,” said Dicredico, in his first season as the third coach the team has had in three years. “But I haven’t seen that. They keep working and plugging away.”

“As far as the future of the program goes, it’s going to be a year-by-year thing to see what the numbers look like,” Lavoie said. “We really want to get a feeder program put in place.”

And that seems to be the problem for the Sabers, who this season have a roster of 15. As a club, it was basically an enjoyable activity, so getting beaten by many of the other hockey-playing schools didn’t really matter. Now in a more competitive situation, the Sabers, with few experienced hockey players, aren’t able to match up. They’ve been outscored 107-9 and their closest game was a 7-3 loss at home to Berlin.

Only one player, sophomore Taylor Huyck, plays off-season, for the Nashua Panthers 19-and-under team. Many of the other players do come from other sports, but hockey isn’t their main deal.

“You know, it’s funny, right now we have athletes and we’re putting them on skates,” Lavoie said. “We have very few skaters who are hockey players. But we have very good athletes … That’s one thing Ken has done a very good job with them. He understood that. We went from scoring very few goals last year to scoring (nine this year). That’s a small stride right there.”

Small indeed, but it’s pretty much what DeCredico expected, coming from coaching in Massachusetts, where girls hockey is more established (he has coached boys as well). In Massachusetts if he had a numbers problem he could draw from the eighth grade, but under NHIAA by-laws Souhegan is too large for that to happen.

“It’s mainly our depth,” DeCredico said when talking about the difference between the Sabers and the rest. “A lot of the other teams, they play during the off-season.”

DeCredico has some building blocks, especially in freshman forwards Agi Chretian and Audrey Wesson.

Junior Kelsea Demis has three goals and three assists to lead the Sabers in scoring. He’s also heard from the parent grapevine that younger sisters of current players are planning to join the program when they’re eligible. “And down the pipeline there’s a handful of girls who play for the Nashua (youth hockey) team,” he said. “So there is a little bit of a trickle.”

He’s hoping for a lot more.

Still, DeCredico wants to change the mindset. On one hand, he didn’t mind hearing that many of the girls enjoy playing for the program because there are “no expectations” that exist with some of the other sports. But on the other hand, he wants the players to develop higher expectations.

“At least,” he said, “to expect to be in every game.”

With time, Lavoie says.

“At this point in time … we’re not concerned with wins and losses,” he said. “If we can get (the wins), great, but it’s more about gaining interest, gaining the feeder programs, getting improvement in place, and the wins will probably come with time.”

Speaking of time, DeCredico says he’s committed to the program.

“Definitely,” he said. “I would love to be the (coach) around for the team’s first win, just to see the excitement.”