2007-08 Season
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2007-08 Recap Roller hockey at La Jolla Country Day is always a bit of a challenge, because of the David and Goliath angle. We are a small private school, with an upper school enrollment of about 360 students, competing mostly against large public high schools with enrollments anywhere from 1500 to 3000. This year looked to be a special challenge, because we lost six seniors to graduation last year and had only two returning players -- junior defenseman Ben Sweeney and junior Eric Williamson, who took over goaltending responsibilities. We added junior Cameron Eibl and four freshman: Joey Bryant-Sowka, Camille Corbin, James Owsiany, and Sam Brink. So we were competing with a very short bench, a young team, and a new goalie. Despite these challenges, we fielded the best team in my three years of coaching at LJCD, and we had a very good year. During regular season play, we were 10-9-1 overall and 6-2 in league play. This record was good for second place in the South Bay League, behind Hilltop, and 10th seed in the conference power rankings and playoff seedings. We lost 7-2 to 7th seeded Otay Ranch in the first round of conference playoffs. |
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From the beginning of the season, we relied heavily on the contributions of our three travel ice hockey players -- Ben (who played 18AA with the San Diego Gulls), James (who played Bantam AA with SDIA), and Cami (who played 16AAA with the Anaheim Lady Ducks). Joey brought considerable inline hockey experience to our lineup, giving us a pretty strong starting four. Though both Cameron and Sam had inline hockey experience, neither had played in several years, and it took Eric a while to adjust to the demands of being goalie. So we got off to a somewhat bumpy start against North County powerhouses as some of our players got into playing shape and learned new positions. But before long we gelled into a pretty formidable team. We had an impressive starting four, two players who brought real energy off the bench, and a goalie who had become competent and dependable. We ended up able to skate with just about any team. Our major liability was depth. Though we could compete with anyone through two periods, it was tough to keep up that level of play, against the best teams, through three periods. |
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Three of our players finished at the top of overall conference scoring -- Cami finished third, Ben finished seventh, and James finished twelfth. Ben was named first team all league defense; Cami was named first team all league forward; and James was named second team all league defense.
We are very optimistic about our prospects for next year. We lose no players to graduation and are expecting everyone to come back. In addition, we hope to add a few more freshman, including two experienced hockey players. If all goes well, we should compete for the league title and be able to go deeper into the playoffs.
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Last Updated 2-21-08