SD Prep Sports:

2006-07 Winter Sports
Metro Conference

Roller Hockey

Eastlake Titans roller hockey team:
2006-07 Mesa League co-champions

Posted Feb. 15, 2007
The celebration was unprecedented in the history of Eastlake High School’s roller hockey program. Players raised their sticks, pumped their fists and rushed into a pile in front of goaltender Daniel Hoshina to punctuate their 5-4 victory against eastside rival Bonita Vista on Feb. 15 at Skate San Diego in National City.

The win, coupled with Otay Ranch’s subsequent 8-4 victory against La Jolla, gave the Titans a share of this season’s Mesa League championship — a first for the program that predates the formation of the CIF/Metro Conference seven years ago.

“It was a phenomenal game,” first-year Eastlake coach Rone Torres said. “When we come to play, we can skate with anybody. The kids knew the expectations. They’ve beaten playoff-caliber teams this season. I’m proud of them.”

The post-game celebration was especially jubilant as the Titans had trailed 4-1 early in the game. Eastlake actually got on the scoreboard first courtesy of team-scoring leader Zack McElroy to take a 1-0 lead just 1:26 into the contest, played in front of a standing room-only crowd that included the school’s football coach, John McFadden, among those gathered in support. But then the Barons, keyed by female standout Kelly Nash, promptly reeled off four unanswered goals to seemingly take command of the contest.

After a timeout, as players screamed and voiced their displeasure at the turn of events, Eastlake’s players were able to harness that raw emotion and use that new-found energy to fuel an amazing comeback that propelled the team into possession of first place in the league standings in the final game of regular season play.

The Titans started the season 0-2 (with three other game postponements prior to the holiday break) and finished it 14-6.
When Torres set the team’s goal at winning a league championship at the onset of the 2006-07 campaign, it raised a few eyebrows considering how the 2005-06 season had ended in disarray and frustration as high profile players left the team.

But Torres, who serves as an offensive line coach and collegiate recruiter for the school’s football team, as well as the track and field coach, started the new season with a clean slate and let players prove themselves over again. The approach worked. The result was a league championship.

“The biggest problem we had was going through the growing pains of a team that hadn’t been as successful as it should have been,” Torres said. “The talent was there. I think the incentive wasn’t.”

The new coach said he took care of that by instilling the “power of leadership,” as he put it, into the hands of the players themselves.

“The sense of accomplishment they’ve felt on and off the rink has translated to wins,” Torres said. “They feel this is a team. If things go wrong, they don’t place blame on one particular player or each other. They blame the team.”

McElroy, the team’s captain, recently was accepted to play roller and ice hockey at Cal Poly Pomona and that has helped to place a new focus on his life, Torres said.

“Zack has brought his grades up. He’s doing well in school. He was undisciplined to start the season and now he’s focused,” Torres said. “He’s rededicated himself to hockey and he knows that this is his team.”

Other players who have made contributions to this season’s squad include a number of other veteran players, such as J.K. Williams, Nathan Scharmann, Kyle Wagner and Casey Shotwell. Wagner and Shotwell are both seniors like McElroy while Williams and Scharmann are both juniors.

But Torres said the team’s biggest surprise this season was the inspired play of goaltender Daniel Hoshina, who turned out to be the hero of the team’s championship game victory against Bonita Vista.

“Daniel made a commitment to improve,” Torres said. “He listened to criticism, even negative. As this team came together, his confidence improved.”

After giving up four goals in the opening period against Bonita Vista, Hoshina closed the door thereafter with two periods of shutout goaltending as Eastlake made its inspired comeback with two goals in each of the final two periods.

McElroy scored two of those four goals while assisting on another to finish the game with three goals and four points. He was the first player to raise his stick in celebration after the buzzer made the Titans’ championship title a reality.

Hoshina, however, quickly became the center of attention.

“I was kind of nervous at the beginning. But after a while, I started to go with the flow,” Hoshina said. “It was a tough game.”
Indeed, in many ways.

Increasingly physical as the game wore on, the contest featured 15 penalties (eight by Bonita Vista and seven by Eastlake) and finally erupted in a scuffle along the boards with 50 seconds to play.

Bonita Vista, which carried a 5-1-1 record in its last seven games into the high stakes matchup, tied the game at 1-1 on a goal by Steven Micallef with 9:57 left in the opening period and proceeded to take a three-goal lead at the first intermission on ensuing tallies by Blake Tanner, Ryan Veenstra and Nash. Defenseman Willy Anderson supplied assists on the Barons’ first and fourth goals while Veenstra and Tanner also picked up assists in the spirited run.

But the Titans hadn’t won eight of their last nine games entering the matchup between longtime eastside rivals (Bonita Vista took the first game by a 5-2 score on Jan. 18) without a reason, and Eastlake once again proved itself up to the challenge by overcoming adversity.

McElroy scored with 8:56 and 3:42 remaining in the 15-minute second period to narrow the score to 4-3, still in the Barons’ favor. J.K. Williams and Nathan Scharmann drew the assists.

Special teams then featured prominently in the Titans’ two third-period goals. Eastlake tied the game, 4-4, on a two-man advantage with 8:08 to play in the game. Tanner had been whistled for the first penalty with 9:54 left and Anderson joined him in the sin bin 38 seconds later, also on a roughing call. The penalties left the Titans with a four-on-two advantage and it took just over a minute into the two-man advantage situation for Williams to finally beat BV netminder Cody Mazzarella, considered to be the best goaltender in the conference.

After working so hard to deadlock the score, it appeared all that would go for naught when the Barons got a power play opportunity with seven minutes left in the period. Instead, the man-disadvantage proved to be Eastlake’s golden bonanza as Kyle Wagner scored a short-handed goal with 25 seconds left in the penalty.

Wagner’s short-handed tally stood up as the game-winner.

“I just saw their guy fumbling with the puck,” Wagner said. “I charged the guy. Once I got the puck and got into the open, I knew I was going with my backhand shot. I faked the goalie top shelf and as he slid, I went five-hole.”

Despite finishing the game shorthanded, Bonita Vista — particularly Nash — was a threat to tie the game until the final seconds.
In fact, Nash supplied the game-winner in the Barons’ 3-2 victory against first place Otay Ranch on Feb. 13 to set up the climactic regular season finale that saw four teams all with equal opportunity to claim either a share of outright possession of this year’s league title.

The Titans set themselves up for the fantastic finish with a 7-5 victory against Otay Ranch on Feb. 6 as McElroy finished the game with three goals and one assist and Wagner had two goals and two assists. Eastlake rebounded from two early one-goal deficits to lead 3-2 after the opening period and managed to match the Mustangs each time afterward, with the Titans holding onto a tenuous 6-5 lead with less than five minutes remaining in regulation play.

The heroic victory doubled as Eastlake’s first against the Mustangs in three years.

After the win scrambled the league standings, Torres said the team had one goal — to finish out the regular season undefeated. Where his team finished in the final standings was “up to the hockey gods,” he said.

Torres said his team found motivation in a 10-9 loss to La Jolla the previous game. “You find little blessings here and there,” the Titans coach said. “We were wondering when the real team would show up like it’s supposed to be. It showed up against an opponent that historically we hadn’t done well against. It took a lot of refocusing on everyone’s part. Either we were going to turn it completely around or our season would end the way it started.”

The future now appears on solid footing for the Titans. With Williams and Scharmann both returning next season, they will form a new core of veterans along with current sophomore Andrew Abuyo and freshman sensation Justin White. Abuyo could easily have led the team in scoring this season had he not rejoined the team at midseason. Entering the final week of the season, Abuyo ranked third in club scoring with 46 points on 15 goals and 31 assists behind McElroy (71 points on 42 goals and 29 assists) and Williams (49 points on 25 goals and 24 assists) despite playing in roughly half the number of games.

Michael Kelley, a defensive back/receiver on the school’s football team, has also made strides on skates this season. He is currently a junior.

“We have an invaluable core coming back next year,” Torres said. “If you look at the points, next year’s first line is just as talented as this year’s and they’ll have a whole year of hockey under their belts.”

And a league title to defend.