Wildcats take Hockey Championship

Posted

by Michael Orbach

Issue of March 21, 2010/ 11 Nissan 5770

With four minutes and 26 seconds left in the last period of the Yeshiva Hockey League championship, Chesky Schreier rushed the orange ball to the middle of the court, cut left from the top, and slapped a shot that bounced over the TABC goalie’s left shoulder. For Schreier, captain of the DRS Varsity Wildcats, the goal was a long time coming.

Four years to be exact.

“After three years of losing, to tell you the truth I don’t remember,” Schreier, 17, from Lawrence, said. “I saw the ball going in and everything stopped.”

Along with a goal in the first few seconds of the game by defensive player Aryeh Mazel, the Wildcats eked out a 2-1 victory against the TABC Storm on March 14.

The Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boy’s junior varsity and varsity Wildcats, together, have the most remarkable and most disappointing record in the Yeshiva hockey league. Over the last five years, the two teams have made it to the championships every year and, in a series of close games, lost every time, until last week.

They’re not too unhappy about it, though.

Coach Larry Gross says he takes pride in making it to the championship every year.

“I have never based a season on whether we won or lost a championship,” Gross explained. “If you go by that then only the champion has a successful season and I totally reject that. It’s just so much more. Every season is a journey and a lot of times that’s more important. It’s not the end, it’s how you got there.”

He credited the team’s success to multiple factors, including former-player-turned-Assistant Coach Michael Davidman.

“I think that, honestly, winning breeds winning and the game takes on some kind of inertia,” Gross explained. “We have really really good kids who buy into the program and I’m blessed with an abundance of talent.”

Rabbi Elly Storch, Head of Judaic Studies and the athletic director of the school, said that the win itself “was gravy on top.”

“We try to use sports as a paradigm for them,” Storch explained. “if they put their minds to a goal they can accomplish it and we’re happy that example was shown... It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about developing the person in many ways more than one: academics, extra curricurlars, team building and [teaching them] hard work can pay off. Sometimes you don’t see that in other areas, but sports you see that very evidently.”

Or in one line, the lesson the school tries to impart to their hockey students according to Storch: “Be mentsches all the time and foster good will.”

He noted that the junior varsity team played hard as well, losing to TABC who also fielded two teams in the championship. The junior varsity Wildcats made it to the championship with an overtime win against MTA in the finals.

“We try hard,” Storch said. “Sometimes the ball bounces the right way and we’re quite grateful... This year they played hard; unfortunately there had to be one winner and [one] loser.”

Schreier, while he credited the coaching of Gross and Davidman, pinpointed another factor that helped the team grab the championship. In earlier seasons, he said, “We weren’t a team.”

“When you’re JV [junior varsity] you’re not really friends,” Schreier related. “You got to be cooler than them, you got to show the freshman that this is our time.”

This year, he said, the team was different. “We’re all friends... This was the most togetherness I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It was something special.”

After the game the team went to Schreier’s house for a dinner from Cho-Sen Island. The team captain, who is going to Netiv Aryeh in Israel next year, wondered if anything could top the victory.

“I don’t know if anything could beat that,” he said wistfully. “If the New York Rangers win the Stanley cup, that would be good. Maybe my wedding.”