Woodstock Boys Hockey Team’s first home match up will be against Northfield on Saturday, December 12 at 8:10 at the Union Area. The Wasps play Brattleboro (12/2) and Hartford (12/9) away.
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By David Miles, Sports Correspondent
The head coach may be new to his position, but he’s known all the Woodstock hockey players for almost a decade-and-a-half now.
Jon Chamberlin played hockey while in high school here in Woodstock from 2002 to 2006. Almost immediately after that he began assisting with the team, first with head coach Bill Elberty and then with Charlie Hancock.
So it was a very natural transition for Chamberlin to ascend to the head coaching position, replacing Hancock this season. As senior Kevan O’Connell put it, “It’s not too different. A lot of the systems are the same. We have a pretty good idea of what to expect.”
What the coach expects — and is getting thus far — is a lot of hard work. Not that they have not worked hard in the past, but junior Luc Issa thinks they may be working even harder in pre-season practice than they did last year.
“Our biggest goal is simply to get better every day,” says Chamberlin. “That’s not just in one area of the game, but in everything. We want to focus on improving in every facet of the game.”
It’s a young team that Chamberlin has this season. There are only two seniors: O’Connell and Braden McCarthy. O’Connell played forward last season, while McCarthy started the season in the attacking zone before Hancock shifted him to defense to bolster that end of the ice early in the year.
Chamberlain feels it is way too early to be assigning positions or working out lines and defensive pairings yet. With a roster of 18 players, there will be some options.
“We’re very young,” says the first-year coach. “We have a long way to go. But we do have a lot of potential.”
Two talented sophomores return on offense in Cullen McCarthy and Steven Townley. Together with Issa they give the team three strong scoring threats.
“I think we can be explosive on offense,” says Issa. “And we can be strong on defense, especially when we all get back to play at that end of the ice.”
The team’s first scrimmage is on Friday and the season opener a week later on the road at Brattleboro on Wednesday, Dec. 2. Even though a lot of talented players graduated from last season, the returnees still have high expectations.
“We’re dedicated and willing to put in what it takes,” says Braden McCarthy. “We’ll need to avoid mistakes and do the little things that it takes to win. Things like staying in the right position and staying focused in the defensive zone. We want to make sure that everybody has that mindset.”
So far Chamberlain sees everybody doing just that.
“It’s a great group. They’ve got great character,” says the coach. “It’s easy to build things with a team like this.”
Chamberlin’s last two seasons as a WUHS hockey player were also the last two times that Woodstock made the final four in hockey. While it is far too early to predict how far this team will go, the veterans are eager to replace the sting of consecutive home losses in the quarterfinal round the past two seasons.
“We’ve been successful in the regular season,” says Braden McCarthy, “Now we need to carry that over into the next round.
This article first appeared in the November 25, 2015 edition of the Vermont Standard.