Two years, two titles.
In its second season in the Canadian Sport School Hockey League, Shawnigan Lake School won its second varsity division banner, beating Calgary’s Edge School 4-2 in the championship game in Penticton on March 13.
After a regular season that saw the team finish with 24 wins, four losses and two overtime losses, Shawnigan opened the playoffs on March 9 with a one-sided 5-1 win over Coeur d’Alene Hockey Academy, on a pair of goals by Kurtis Laurion and one each from Olin Webb, Noah Taron and Chris Norton. Although Shawnigan outshot Edge School 50-16 in the next round-robin game, they had to settle for a 2-1 loss, the lone goal coming from Chase MacKenzie.
That loss sent Shawnigan into a semifinal against Pursuit of Excellence, which Shawnigan won 5-2 on goals by Laurion, Mackenzie, Webb, Dillon Johnson and Quentin Waltzner.
Johnson, Taron, Cody Shepheard and Ethan Hersant scored in the final, while goalie Brady Thompson made 20 saves as the rematch with Edge went Shawnigan’s way.
“I’m most proud of the fact that we didn’t have any individual superstars on the team,” varsity coach James Pollock said. “We wanted to prove to everybody that we were the best ‘team’ in the league, and the fact that we didn’t ride on the back of one or two individual players, like many other teams, is very satisfying as a coach.”
Several players from the 2015 varsity division championship team moved up to Shawnigan’s new entry in the prep division. The school finished in the middle of the 13-team pack, but still secured a playoff spot.
The team’s first playoff game ended in a 10-0 loss to Burnaby Winter Club, followed by a 7-3 loss to Pursuit of Excellence, with Shawnigan’s goals coming from Ben Berard, Liam Kennedy and Kieran Furlonger.
The team went out on a winning note, however, with a 5-4 come-from-behind win over Yale. Berard and Kennedy each scored twice, while Kei Lowes had one goal and Jackson Doucet had three assists. Merek Pipes made 30 saves.
Also playing its first season this year was Shawnigan’s bantam prep team, which went 7-14-4 in the regular season, then bowed out of the playoffs with a 5-1 loss to Delta Hockey Academy (goal by Jacob Fraser) and a 3-2 loss to Okanagan Hockey Academy (goals by Kaleb McHugh and Gabe Schovanek).
Shawnigan had one player in each division named to their respective All-Academic teams: Merek Pipes (prep), Olin Webb (varsity) and Nathan Goliath (bantam). Ben Berard, who had 58 points (34 goals and 24 assists) in 36 games, was a finalist for the prep division MVP award.