On Nov. 17, the Crusader reported that the BVH co-ed roller hockey team faced a player shortage, barely meeting the five-player minimum requirement to form a team in the Southbay Metro League. Three weeks later, the team surpassed the threshold, more than doubling their players to fourteen.
Since the beginning of the school year, the team has stressed recruitment. They reached out to school journalism organizations such as Bonita Vista Productions (BVX) to gain more players. Yet one strategy that went undervalued was through word of mouth.
“A lot of new players are friends of previous players. Thanks to those teammates, recruitment through just word of mouth really helped us grow. [Playing this year] is going to be more fun,” defensive player and senior Jaiden Quillen said.
One prominent aspect that sets roller hockey apart from other sports on-campus is that many players lack previous experience with the puck and roller skates. However, new player and freshman Logan Lieggi found that despite never playing roller hockey before, he could still utilize his skills from ice hockey, a sport that he played when he was younger.
“A lot of the ice hockey maneuvers like skating apply a lot to roller hockey. Ice hockey helped me get into [roller hockey] and is not really that competitive from what I saw. [The sport is] mainly about being welcomed and is pretty much the same with the sport I played,” Lieggi said.
Lieggi emphasized how recruitment at Bonita Vista Middle (BVM) helped him gain knowledge about the roller hockey program before going into high school. Through multiple sports presentations at the middle school, roller hockey finds its way into the minds of younger students. Junior and co-captain Aryk Winters credits to how this type of recruitment helps the team grow.
“Recruiting helped because people do not hear about [roller hockey] much. I thought about playing in middle school, but when they had those sports presentations, they stemmed over roller hockey. I only heard it by word-of-mouth from other players, especially from those around me,” Winters said.
With the season just starting, hopes and dreams arise for the players who take part on the team. Quillen concluded with how the community surrounding roller hockey is all that matters.
“I’m very hopeful because there’s a lot of young talent on the team,” Quillen said. “They are passionate about the sport, and my team is there for everything, especially for the game of roller hockey and for the team as a whole.”
Follow @bvhroller_hockey_ for updates on their matches
