Resurrection Christian adds ice hockey – The Coloradoan
Northern Colorado high school boys hockey players now have a better chance to play on a Colorado High School Activities Association-sanctioned team.
Resurrection Christian, a small private school in Loveland, received CHSAA permission to field a boys team starting with the 2011-12 school year. And according to CHSAA guidelines, the team can have players who live in Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Windsor or other nearby communities, even if they don’t attend Resurrection Christian.
“The RCS school board was looking to provide something unique for Northern Colorado families, and hockey seems like a great fit,” said Scott Miller, a youth pastor at Rocky Mountain Church in Estes Park and a driving force to bring hockey to the school. “No other school north of Longmont has a CHSAA-sanctioned team. RCS is providing a platform for hundreds of hockey families to try out.”
Poudre School District high schools don’t field CHSAA-sanctioned hockey teams, although Fort Collins, Fossil Ridge, Poudre and Rocky Mountain all have club teams. The city teams all play in the High Plains Hockey League, which has 37 teams and hundreds of players statewide.
Byron Alcorn, manager for the Fort Collins club team, said he didn’t know how the addition of a Resurrection Christian team would impact the club teams.
“Kids now will have a choice,” Alcorn said. “Do they want to try out for what basically will be an all-star team, or do they want to play for their own school and with their friends? A lot want to play for their school with their friends.”
Miller, whose wife teaches at Resurrection Christian and whose three children attend school there, including a hockey-playing junior, said he wasn’t sure how many boys would try out for the team. Miller said the Cougars would keep 30 players on the roster and dress 20 each game.
“We’ve heard as many as 300 to 500 kids, according to CHSAA,” Miller said. “I’d be happy if 60 kids tried out. I think we’ll be something in the middle of that.”
Resurrection Christian is a Class 2A school, CHSAA’s second-smallest classification, with about 180 high school students. CHSAA only has one classification for its 28 hockey teams, so the Cougars will compete against the likes of Chatfield (2,012 students), Regis (1,736), Columbine (1,636), Steamboat Springs (640) and Aspen (530). Those teams, too, can draw players from outside their districts if they are the closest school fielding a hockey team.
Resurrection Christian is accepting coaching applications through May 6. Hockey is a winter sport, and the Cougars will begin their first season Nov. 12.