GRAND FALLS-WINDSOR, NL – The Exploits Valley High (EVH) Eagles hockey team came a long way from initial tryouts to the end of the season.
The Grand Falls-Windsor team not only won the Central High School Hockey League championship in two games of a best of three series final over Gander Collegiate, they also took gold at an invitational tournament in Marystown, hosted the Donnini’s tournament and fared well at the Beaumont Hamel Cup, their last tournament of the season.
“They are an absolutely fantastic group of young men,” according to coach Glenn Casey.
The teacher at EVH has been coaching now for several years at the AAA level – Bantam AAA, Pewee A - and it was the first time he’s coached a high school team.
“Doing so was an absolutely fantastic experience,” Casey said. “They are such a joy to coach, it’s a pleasure. They progressed in every way I thought possible.
“I wasn’t really sure how the team was going to fair at the beginning of the season.
There was a lot of work to be done. But they gravitated towards everything I said and taught them and they excelled far above my expectations.”
Player Jake Sparkes agrees that there was a major improvement in the team over the season.
“At the start of the year we didn’t play so well, we didn’t really come together as a team and we didn’t really win a lot of games, but then as the year progressed we came together as a team more and we started winning a lot of games, so that was good,” Sparkes said.
They won 10 out of the last 14 games to finish up the season, including the league title.
“It was just a really good time because we’ve always had a big rivalry against Gander and they would always beat us in the league,” Sparkes said. “It was good to take it from them.”
Looking ahead
The coach is hoping more teams will join the league, as it was EVH playing off against Gander Collegiate in the league final and he would like to see more of a regular season schedule.
“We played a lot of hockey this year, we probably played 30 plus games, but we had to go find some games,” Casey said. “Kudos to Corner Brook because we ended up playing them several times.”
At the last tournament of the season, the team took on some of the top high school teams in the province and ended up winning a couple games in the round robin, which was great success for them, the coach said.
“It just goes to show that this team - when it played well - can compete and battle with any team in this province,” he said. “I think that said a lot about their character, how far they came over the course of the season and what they were capable of doing.”
Confidence
For Casey, the biggest thing he wanted to stress was getting players used to the feeling of winning and breeding that confidence.
“For some of them they haven’t won much over the past few years, so that was a new experience for a lot of them to actually win, know how to win, teaching them how to do that and getting that drive within them to competed and battle and win game in and game out was something that I saw progress so it was a great thing to see,” Casey said. “It’s always nice, whether it be in the classroom, and kids catch on to something you are teaching them and they are able to expand and grow and learn, and I’ve applied the same sort of method to hockey as well. So being able to teach them things and seeing them grasping the concept and then putting it into play and excel from it was fantastic.”
The coach can’t speak high enough about how good the players are – they are super in terms of behaviour and respect, noting people would comment on how respectful the players were.
“I remember a gas attendant telling me, ‘Those kids are so respectful and so polite’ and that’s a good thing to see,” Casey said. “That stuff to me is the other teachable things that go on outside the hockey rink in terms of building their character.”
Emotional
Sparkes - who at the age of 17, and after three years on the team - will be one of eight players graduating this year.
“It was very emotional,” Sparkes said. “When I was younger that’s all I wanted to do, was play hockey and I put so much work and effort into it.
“Playing high school hockey with all my friends and buddies growing up and then seeing it come to an end, it really did suck.”
He said there were tight friendships built over the years.
“Hockey creates a brotherhood,” Sparkes said. “We always got each others’ back off and on the ice and we build as a team and we just look back on these memories.
It was good.”
Sparkes plans on attending college in Grand Falls-Windsor in the fall, so he will be around to watch the boys and cheer them on next season.
“For all the young ones out there, play hard and cherish every shift because it eventually comes to an end,” he said. “Time goes really fast and you don’t think about the time because you are just playing hockey all the time.
“To the boys, good luck next year. Hopefully they can take the cup home again.”
