We have now officially started on the ice. October 17th was the national start date for all NCAA Division III hockey teams on the ice. There are many teams across the country that recruit just to their varsity team and start team practices on the first day, but there are also many that have to start with tryouts. We are one of the teams that starts the first 3-4 days with tryouts. I wanted to take this opportunity to once again be very transparent with all of the readers as to how we run our tryouts and what we will be doing this week.
I first want to mention some of the facts about who is trying out this year. We have a total of 35 players trying out this year. I will break this down for you in some interesting facts below. This number is a lot lower than in the past, for some reason, there have been fewer and fewer players that want to try-out that know they would be most likely playing JV hockey. The reason that I have for this decrease in numbers is that even JV hockey here at SJU is a huge commitment. At the varsity level we spend about 3-4 hours a day with hockey-related activities (40 minutes of driving to-and-from the NHC). At the JV level, this number is about 2-3 hours (40 minutes of driving as well). This just becomes too much of a commitment for many students. Here is my shameless plug once again…. if we had a rink in St. Joseph, I think we would have a lot more students interested in playing hockey here at SJU.
So with all of that said, here is a breakdown of the players trying out.
· 6 Seniors – 5 Juniors – 15 Sophomores – 9 Freshmen
· 18 Forwards – 12 Defensemen – 5 Goalies
· 24 players that have junior hockey experience
o 16 North American Hockey League (NAHL)
o 4 North American 3 Hockey League (NA3HL)
o 1 Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL)
o 1 Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL)
o 1 Eastern Hockey League (EHL)
o 1 Northern Ontario Hockey League (NOJHL)
· 11 players that came to SJU right out of high school
o Burnsville
o Centennial
o Champlain
o Cretin Derham Hall
o Hudson, WI
o Maple Grove
o Princeton
o Red Wing
o Robbinsdale Armstrong
o Roseville
o St. Cloud Apollo
Seeing that we have a smaller number of players trying out this year, we have decided to have a three-day tryout. We will make our first round of cuts this Wednesday after our Red/White game. If we have some guys on the bubble, we will keep them practicing through the weekend and get down to our final team by Monday, October 24th. I have attached our schedule for tryouts below so that you have an idea of what we are doing this week.
Monday, Oct. 17
4:30-5:15 Goalies/Red Team (Grey Team will come out and warm up in center ice at 5:00)
5:15-5:45 Flow and Battle Drills
ICE CUT
6:00-6:45 Small Area Games
Tuesday, Oct. 18
4:15-5:00 Goalies/Grey Team (Red Team will come out and warm up at 4:45)
5:00-5:30 Controlled Scrimmage
ICE CUT
5:45-6:30 Scrimmage (with coach as official)
Wednesday, Oct. 19
4:15-6:30 Red/White Game (with officials and clock)
Thursday, Oct. 20
4:45-5:45 Systems Practice
ICE CUT
6:00-6:45 Controlled Scrimmage with Special Teams
Again, I appreciate you following our hockey program through this blog and I hope that this entry gives you an inside look into what we are doing this first week and through tryouts.
