Sports Recap: Fox Lane and Greeley Garner Postseason Awards

Fox Lane

The Foxes enjoyed  a winning season at 13-8-1 and a 4-1 first-round playoff triumph against rival Horace Greeley thanks to a talented corp of players that led it to success this winter.

“I feel very good about our season,” Fox Lane coach Charles Berger said. “We were strong on the ice. We took a lot of steps up from last year. Our record ended up being similar but we beat teams with some force. Last year was a battle every game. This year we really imposed our will on a couple of teams.”

Fox Lane was able to boast of two all-league players in senior forward Joe Corsi and sophomore goalie Conor Bunyan.

Earning all-league honorable mention honors were senior forwards Josh Wollman and Donny Castaldo.

Leading them was Corsi who finished his five-year varsity career with a team high 31 points on the strength of 16 goals and 15 assists.

“You can’t say enough about Joe Corsi," Berger said. “It will feel weird not having Corsi be a part of the Fox Lane Foxes. It’s hard to say what I am going to miss most. He’s a great guy, he’s a leader, on and off the ice. He’s a special player. What a great athlete he was. We are going to miss him.”

Another player Berger is going to miss is senior forward Andrew Bunyan. Bunyan won the Doc Rasbeck Scholar Athlete Award, which goes to a player that does extremely well with both his schoolwork and on ice performance.

“It’s huge to have one of our players win that award,” Berger said. “It’s one person per conference that wins it and Andrew Bunyan is extremely deserving of it. There’s a lot of pride in the program to have somebody like that. We’re fortunate to have a lot of kids who are scholar athletes at Fox Lane.”

Those kids are a group that he was very proud to coach.

“These kids work hard, I feel like everyone kid on our team deserves an award,” Berger said. “For a group of them to get recognized by the entire section, I think that’s great. These are wonderful kids, they deserve it. This brings a lot of pride to the program.”

Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley (7-12-1) had three award winners, including all-league honoree, sophomore forward Blake Davis. Davis led the team in points (22) and assists (12) and was second on the team in goals with 10.

“He had a real strong season this year,” Horace Greeley coach Zach Dargaty said. “He took a big step from last year. I thought overall he was our best player. He was among the leaders in scoring goals, had a lot of assists. He played a strong defensive game, he killed a lot of penalties for us.”

Earning all-league honorable mention were junior forward Sam Spar, who led the Quakers in goals with 13, and freshman defenseman Owen Gatto.

“Sam was our best offensive player,” Dargaty said. “Toward the end of the year he really came on with a lot of intensity.”

“Owen as freshman just came in and was ready to play high-school hockey,” Dargaty said. “He was a solid defender all year, he was our best true defenseman. He controlled the puck really well.”

The Quakers three award winners helped the team go from no wins a year ago to seven this winter.

“We had a real good year this season considering that we didn’t win a game last season,” Dargaty said. “We didn’t beat really any strong teams but we were competitive against Fox Lane in two games, including the playoff game. We gave ourselves a chance to win I thought.”

Dargaty said going into the season he knew this year would be a struggle because while he had talented players, most of them were very young. However, the Quakers coach said the encouraging thing was that the team improved as the season went along, which bodes well for next year.

The Quakers will lose a few seniors but the good news is that they will return 90 percent of their players from this year according to Dargaty.

“The kids are really excited about next year,” Dargaty said.