Great Weekend for Hendricken Hockey
Mark Stillson
This past weekend was a great one for the Bishop Hendricken Varsity Hockey Team. The team won both of its games, the first coming in a Friday night win over Barrington High School ,6-3,and the second a huge Saturday night road victory over Mount St. Charles at Adelard Arena, 4-0.
In the Friday night contest, the Hawks faced the Barrington Eagles at Thayer Arena . Barrington drew first blood on a power play goal during a scrum in front of the net, which screened Hawks’ goalie Craig Colson. Sure enough, though, the Hawks fought back and 6 minutes later, Anthony Fera (assisted by Matthew Creamer and Tucker Alberigo) put the biscuit in the basket and had the good guys on the board . From that point on Hendricken scored another three goals in the first period, two of which also came off Fera’s stick (giving him a hat trick), with the other scored by Eddy Markowski.
Second period action was generally quiet. In addition to a couple of fluke goals, Jamie Armstrong dented the back of the net for the Hawks, and the third period saw Coach Creamer put Mitch Proulx in net for the Hawks, who stopped all four shots he faced. Finelli scored the final tally, sealing the 6-3 victory for the Green and Gold.
A brief snippet of the game action can be seen here.
Saturday night at Woonsocket, the Hawks and Mounties played a hard and very physical game. Proulx was a phenomenal in net for the entire game, stopping all 44 shots he faced; Lawrence, the Mounties’ netminder, also played a great game, stopping 27 of 31 shots he faced. The Mount, however, just couldn’t get to Proulx. The Hawks’ four goals were scored by Fera (2), Creamer, and Waterman.
To this point, Hendricken has an overall record of 7-1 and is undefeated in league play (5-0). The Hawks play only one game the week of January 7th, on Friday the 11th in a repeat matchup with Barrington, this time at Dennis Lynch Arena. The Hawks follow that up with games against Smithfield on the 19th (7:30, Thayer) and then the following Monday at Burrillville at Levy Rink at 2:30.
Early Season Growing Pains for Hawks' Basketball
When the basketball season began, Coach Gomes and the rest of his staff felt that this year might be - if not a complete re-building year - a year when it might take a bit longer than usual for his fairly young team to develop into the cohesive unit that is typically the trademark of his teams. As expected, the team has so far experienced some early-season (and perhaps necessary) lumps, but according to Coach Gomes, there have been some very encouraging signs along the way.
Over the Christmas break, the team traveled to New Jersey, where they played in a holiday tournament against some stiff competition. While the guys came out on the short end in both of their contests in the Garden State, according to all members of the coaching staff, the team more than held their own and more and more began to show the toughness that our basketball teams always do. This past Monday night, the Hawks took their home floor against a talented North Kingstown team in a game that our coaches knew that they would have to turn into a grinder if they were to have a chance. Our guys more than stepped up to the challenge, as they held a three-point lead with eight minutes to go. In the end, however, our guys fell just short, as NK emerged from our building with a hard-fought 56-50 win.
The Providence Journal's slideshow from the game can be found here.
Will Tavares, Garfield Coustard, and Kazre Cummings all contributed very solid performances, as they scored 17, 10, and 8 points respectively, and the trio combined for 20 rebounds (and let's not forget a monster dunk by Koz).
The team also collectively forced a very good North Kingstown team into turning the ball over twenty times, which, according to Coach Gomes, is a tribute to the tough, fundamental team defense that the guys maintained throughout the contest.
Coach added that since the team returned from the tournament in New Jersey, he has seen outstanding progress and improvement in overall chemistry and teamwork. The heart, effort, and determination with which the Hawks played against NK is clearly a testament to that.
