This year's resurgent team, Stanford Club Ice Hockey (5-7, American Collegiate Hockey Association), finished its season this month with five wins in its past six games. The Cardinal's final game of the season on Feb. 3, a 5-3 victory over UC Davis, was won in front of enthusiastic fans at the Sharks Ice, the team's home rink in San Jose.
Captain Joshua Kim, 24, from New York City, helped revitalize a team that only played a shortened schedule last year. Kim spoke with Winston Adams, Director of Sports and Youth Programs at Stanford University, about the logistics of building a hockey program, including creating a game schedule, purchasing equipment, securing on-ice practice time, and budgeting for the costs of all these activities. We collaborated extensively.
Adams brings a wealth of experience to club hockey, having played on San Jose State University's club hockey team and running the SJSU club sports program before coming to the farm. “If there's anyone who knows the strategies for running a hockey program at Stanford, it's him,” Kim said. For Adams, “it was almost starting from scratch.”
With Adams' help, Kim brought in head coach Alex Hult, who had played professional hockey overseas for 10 years. Haruto arrived with reasonable expectations. “My goal is to not only build a competitive program, but also to give back to these athletes and try to make them good leaders,” he said.
Kim was also responsible for recruiting athletes, both male and female, both undergraduate and graduate students. Although it can be difficult to add a hockey team to a student's academic and social priorities, Kim has found that the group of players is united by their love for the sport.
Coach Kim said, “All the players are working very hard in practice.'' Practices were held twice a week at 8:15 a.m. in San Jose.
This upstart team has a young core, including freshmen Taden Hose, Thomas Sitzman, Luke Woodworth and Joshua Shuk. Sophomore Mia Garvey. His juniors Charles Joyner, Ethan Cato, Andrew Yang, and Kim, along with seniors Cameron Pennington and Simba Hsu. Several graduate students are also on the team, including Andrew Martland and Brennan Simon.
Despite a tough start, with the team losing all six games in the fall, the players won five of six games in the winter, highlighted by a 7-5 victory over Cal Lutheran (CLU). Both Sitzman and Hose scored three-goal hat tricks in this game. Pennington was also great in goal, shutting out CLU in the first period, but had to play most of the third period with a player's stick due to a broken goalie stick.
The team's winning streak continued until the final game of the season against the University of California, Davis.
The Cardinal scored the first two goals of the game. Hose beat the puck past the UC Davis goalie at 15:30 of the first period, and Martland scored immediately from deep on a faceoff on a power play against Stanford at 8:11. Inside the Aggies zone. UC Davis used the man advantage to help the Aggies beat Pennington with 2:09 left in the period, cutting the margin to one point.
UC Davis maintained the momentum and tied the game at 18:39 of the second period. However, Stanford scored the next three points during this period. Hose scored from close range on a power play at 15:26, Kim scored at 6:53, and Hose scored again 20 seconds later. The Aggies closed the gap to 5-3 with a goal midway through the third period, but the Cardinal held on with a beautiful save from Pennington, who stopped 37 Aggie shots in the game. The Cardinal had 31 shots on goal.
Hose, a Saskatchewan native who played AAA and junior hockey, said he was proud of his fifth hat trick of the season. “Tommy Sitzman helped me from start to finish. [Aggies] “I was able to get it in the zone and put it in the back of the net,” he said.
The team is already looking forward to building on what they have achieved this season. Kim said he was proud of the way the players overcame adversity in the fall and came together to form a winning team in January.
“When I think about the legacy I want to leave at Stanford, it goes without saying that the hockey team is very important to me. It’s reflected in everything we do,” Kim said. As a student at Stanford. ”
For now, the team will take a break from a grueling schedule. “Honestly, some of the team, probably myself included, are looking forward to getting a little bit of sleep the first Tuesday and Thursday,” Kim said.
