Litte Cyclones Hockey Gains Valuable State Tournament Experience

As the Midwest High School Hockey League Varsity State Tournament ascended on Ames this past weekend with the top 8 teams competing for the ultimate prize, our Ames Little Cyclones found themselves in an exciting but unfamiliar situation.

For the program it was the first time in seven years it had made an appearance in the tournament, and for our players it was the first time any of them had competed in this type of tournament atmosphere.

As the 7th overall seed in the tournament we were playing the No. 2 seed and a team that had won 22 games in a row and had not lost since Dec. 2 when Ames beat them. The Kansas City Jets were playing as well as any hockey team could play over the last two and half months and our staff new that we would have to be at our best to beat a Kansas City Team who was at their best.

On Friday night at 4 p.m. in our rink right here in Ames our kids stepped onto the ice in a State tournament and it was great and exciting. As our staff suspected Kansas City was at their very best, and we for whatever reason were not. We played hard and hung in their being down just 1-0 after the first period, but the second period was our end as we gave up 4 goals and had several breakdowns. The final at the end of the night was a 6-1 loss, in front of a great crowd that came out to support us. The result was disappointing, considering that we felt that we were as prepared and as ready to go as we possibly could be, but the expereince of it all will be something for our kids to build on and move forward and get better.

You can call it what you want- the team that played Friday night was not the team that ended the regular season with 6 wins and 1 loss and it was not even the same team that practiced for the two weeks leading up to the tournament, we were out of character, and whether that is nerves, fear, or just the newness of the expereince, the bottom line is that on Friday night we got beat by a team that was better than us for that 45 minutes of game time and 2 hours of real time. So our program will move on and will grow from this experience and hopefully be back soon with a different result.

I want to take a minute to thank all of our staff, all of our parents and volunteers, and all the players for their hard work and dedication througout the years. To our seniors, Alex Thompson, Zach Lister, Dalton Weber and Jake Petsch, thank you for making your mark on our program and returning it to the State Tournament.

Anytime that you get the chance as a high school student athlete to compete for a championship in a tournament like this, it is special, combined that with the fact that this tournament is in Ames every year, makes it even more special for us. I have learned as I have gotten older and enter my 13th year in the coaching profession that it is much more about the journey and not so much the destination. The results this weekend are disappointing, but the journey continues, and my hope is that we will be back and hopefully do it better than we did it last time and do it better than it has ever been done before.

I look forward to continuing to build this high school hockey program, and making it a source of pride for the players, the parents, the fans and the community we live in. High School hockey can and will succeed here, and this 2011-2012 group took a very big step in that process. The expereince they gained will fuel future success.