The varsity hockey is off to a rocky start to their season but they still have time to make the changes they need to end off on a strong note.
Assistant Captain and Varsity player Connor McDonnell ’25 said, “Recently we have been doing better but overall, it has been a struggle.” Almost halfway through the season the varsity team has a record of 4-8-1 and is placed 9th out of 12th in the Arizona High School Hockey Association D1 League.
This is not much of a change compared to other years as McDonnell said, “Honestly, we have been doing pretty badly over the last few years, so, I don’t think much has changed”
There are multiple contributing factors to the hockey team’s struggles throughout the start of the season. The Assistant Coach of the Varsity team Mrs. Shelby Stringer said, “It’s challenging to play at the D1 level, just based on the way that we are a pure hockey team and most teams that we are playing in the league are not pure.”
A pure hockey team is a team that only has players that attend the school the team represents. Brophy is one of three pure teams in D1, the other schools being Pinnacle and Notre Dame.
Another challenge that the hockey team deals with is attendance. McDonnell said, “We struggle to have all of our players at every game because a lot of them play club which is hard because a lot of those club players are really good too.”
The roster of the team changes every year with the varsity team losing valuable seniors that added skill and leadership that helped the team on the ice.
“It has been hard to replace those seniors that we lost last year because we need more of the upperclassmen’s strength on the team who are physically stronger and more acclimated to play,” said McDonnell ’25
The biggest improvement the team wants to make is taking advantage of scoring opportunities.
Stringer said, “One of our biggest struggles is our inability to capitalize on scoring opportunities because we don’t score a lot of goals on our team, which definitely puts us behind other teams.”
On the JV side of the hockey program, the team has been steadily improving throughout the year. With the JV hockey team, it is hard to track how well the team will do every year.
Head Coach Mr. Steven Schillig ’15 said, “It’s always different every year because junior varsity is always filled with kids who have either played hockey at a minimal amount or have just started which causes the talent to change every year”
Even with the new talent every year the practice that the team has put in has paid off as they are currently on a three-game winning streak making their record 3-3-3.
“The guys have not only increased their personal talents but have also increased their talent as a team and now we are on a heater,” said Schillig
The team is still early in their season and has time to not only continue their win streak but improve as a team even more than they have already. Coach Schillig has set a lofty goal for the team that he hopes they will be able to complete by the end of their season.
Schillig said, “There are fifteen games left in the season and my goal would be to go 18-3-3 and get fifteen straight wins.”
