By Michael Holcombe, Sports Writer
This winter, the Monroe Township High School ice hockey embarks on only its third season ever and just it’s second varsity campaign.
Like any program that young, Monroe has had some growing pains. But in its first varsity season Monroe was able to finish only two games below .500 and, even more impressively, won three of its last four games.
But for all of that early success, coach Gerard Minter knows that his program still has some work to do and will face some pitfalls along the way to establishing itself as a competitive program year in and year out.
Losing 10 seniors and drawing his talent from a municipality that has an established roller hockey program but no ice rink is just a part of the puzzle Minter is struggling to solve.
”A lot of them are roller hockey players,” he admits of the players who will have to replace the graduated seniors on his roster. “It’s a big program in town and a lot of them cross over (to ice hockey.) We spend a lot of time teaching them how the game is different. Like there is no checking in roller hockey and they step on the ice and there’s checking. So we’re trying to convert them earlier and trying to get them into a junior program.
”We’re still in the works trying to get different things going, like pushing summer programs. Also we’ve got no ice in town (home games are in Farmingdale) so they have to travel to play and that’s why it’s not always the easiest thing to get into.”
In spite of all those problems, however, Minter feels his squad can match the performance of last year’s team.
”I think the younger kids that came in from last year are stepping up,” he said. “I think we’ll be about on the same page as we were last year. Obviously it was a big loss to lose that many seniors but I still think we will be in the same shape as last year.
”We’re still in the building stage of our program and we’re trying to get an identity for ourselves. My whole thing with the program is being respected and never giving up regardless of the team record.”
Another difficult problem in establishing a team identity is the fact that Monroe does not belong to a conference. In the past that has resulted in some quirky scheduling. That’s a problem Minter thinks he might have solved for this year.
”When you’re in a conference you are playing teams for the most part that are supposed to be on the same level,” he said. “ But we were playing teams from the whole spectrum. So we got to experience both ends.
”We did a little better with the scheduling this year. There are three tiers in high school hockey and we have tried to schedule most of the teams in the lower division. Then we picked a couple above to see what the competition was like.”
Minter will be counting on a core group of juniors and seniors to provide the experience his squad needs to reach that goal.
As with any ice hockey program, an experienced goalie is essential and Monroe has one in the person of senior Colin Riedel. While he was only a backup a year ago, Riedel has seen time in the net and will be carrying a heavy load as both of his backups this year will be untested freshmen.
He will be joined by three other seniors, forwards John Scarpa and Zach Wismer and defenseman Anthony Modugno.
Adding their experience to the cause will be junior forwards Greg Anash, John Roman, Brian Kolby and Artie Thompson.
”The most important thing now is to make them better players,” Minter said in looking forward to the progress he hopes to make with his team this season. “We want them to improve on the technical aspects, knowing the correct way to pass, shoot and be in position. We want them to know how to work as a team and support each other.
”We’re just building the program and some of them haven’t played organized hockey. They need to know the correct way to do everything and implement all the different systems.
”It’s always tough before the first game. You can watch and scrimmage but until that first game you can’t really see where your strengths and weaknesses are. We’ve got a big game for our opener against South Brunswick (this Friday at the team’s home ice, the Wall Sports Arena.) They’re an experienced program and a lot of the kids know each other.
”If we do what we need to do this season, we’ll be .500 or better. We have a lot of challenges ahead but if we’re focused we shouldn’t have any trouble making it to the state tournament.”
