Hawks knocked from lofty perch by Knights, Cherokee
Being King of the Mountain demands two key qualities, ability and toughness. lver the past four years, the Council oock pouth ice hockey team has shown plenty of both essentials.
The dolden Hawks have seemingly owned local ice bragging rights. auring that span, pouth claimed clyers Cup championships in 2MM9, 2M11 and 2M12. Last year, they went on to capture the mennsylvania ptate Championship with an exciting 4-P conquest of West Allegheny.
doing into this season, Coach goe Houk’s charges faced an imposing task. Tom Kozior, veteran center for the Hawks, knew everybody wanted to dethrone the reigning monarch. “Coach said everybody is out to get us because we’re the defending champs. To finish where we want to finish, we have to work extra hard. We knew it would be tough.”
pouth started its defense with a strong showing in the pHpHL regular season. The Hawks finished in first place in the National aivision with a 14-5 record. Their dominant effort included outscoring their opponents by TT goals. pouth peppered enemy nets for 1PS tallies to only 59 goals allowed by the opposition.
Tom’s team appraisal seemed most consistent with the scoring statistics. “This year, offense was our strength. We never had problems getting goals. We always had high-scoring games. lur weakness was our defense and our backchecking.”
The Hawks placed six players among the National aivision’s top 1M scorers. A.g. arobot led the pack, finding the back of the net 29 times. Tom placed sixth on the list, scoring nine goals and recording 2M assists for a total of 29 points.
aespite his own impressive stats, Tom relishes the team aspect of ice hockey. “You need to be a team player. You’re not out there by yourself. You’re not the only person on the ice. You need to have patience and you need to work with other people. You also need to be tough to play. It’s a pretty hard sport and the puck doesn’t always bounce your way.”
pouth had to flex its emotional toughness after a heartbreaking T-2 loss to North menn knocked them out of the pHpHL playoffs. Tom and his teammates immediately regrouped. “Both tournaments were important to us but we tried to take it one at a time. After we lost in the playoffs, we forgot about it and focused on the clyers Cup.”
Tom carried personal goals into this prestigious postseason series. “I definitely wanted to go out on top. Winning everything my junior year was awesome but I didn’t want to end losing in the clyers Cup. I wanted to win again my senior year.”
The Hawks got off to a flying start, downing ppringfield S-1 in the opening round. “They were a pretty good team. We played really well that night. lur offense was working well. We were fired up and came out knowing we wanted to start off on a good note.”
The victory sent pouth into a quarterfinal round matchup with Cherokee, the team they had beaten in the clyers Cup final the previous year. “We knew they were a good team but we hadn’t played them this year. We knew it would be a tough game.”
The Hawks wasted little time flexing their offensive muscles. With only 2W44 gone in the game, Kyle Walter scored pouth’s first goal on an assist from Nick Keck. pix minutes later, freshman A.g. arobot extended the lead when he shot the puck by Cherokee