This winter marked the start of another season of MCPS ice hockey, a sport that has yet to captivate a large audience in the county. With student focus on more locally popular sports such as basketball or football, ice hockey is often overlooked at the high school level despite its nationwide popularity.
While many sports are available at every school, hockey is unique in many ways. First of all, practice times and locations are unusual compared to other school sports, which typically practice during the week on school campuses.
“Northwest practices one to two times a week in Frederick, whenever ice time is available, on Mondays and Sundays typically,” Northwest High School sophomore and player Ben Linteris said.
Most sports in Montgomery County are funded by the schools that participate, and parents are not required to buy uniforms or pay coaches. Hockey is not included in this group.
“With ice hockey, it is considered a club sport. It isn’t a school-sponsored varsity team, purely because hockey isn’t as popular in Maryland as other sports are. It is also hard because if it was school-sponsored they would have to provide all the equipment to some kids, and that can get expensive and become very difficult,” Montgomery Blair High School sophomore and player Ryan Frank said.
The limited popularity of the sport has even led to the merging of some schools’ teams.
“The Blair hockey team is a joint team of all the DCC schools, Blair, Einstein, Wheaton, Kennedy and Northwood,” Frank said.
Additionally, hockey rinks are often further away than most students are willing to travel to watch a hockey game, leading to less spectator turnout.
“I don’t think RM hockey gets that much attention because when we have games you have to travel farther,” Richard Montgomery sophomore and player Dylan Goetz said.
Fortunately for both hockey fans and players, the viewership at games seems to have been increasing in recent years.
“Most kids are just learning about their school’s hockey teams and are now starting to show up in numbers,” Linteris said.
Expectedly, this boom in attendance is being seen first at schools where the teams are better and draw a larger crowd anyway.
“The level of recognition across the county is extremely low for some schools and extremely high for others,” Frank said. “For example, Churchill has won the Division 1 state championship many times and are often very dominant, so they get a lot of recognition.”
For many, this improvement is well deserved since a great amount of work is put into the construction of the teams.
“I definitely think that RM hockey should deserve some more attention because people work really hard, and it would be really nice to see a lot more people come out to our games,” Goetz said.
Aside from working towards further acclaim, the teams across the county continue to work hard and do what they love: playing hockey.
“The hockey team is just a great environment because all the kids are really passionate and enjoy this, but we’re also very friendly,” Richard Montgomery sophomore and player Lucas Perkins said.
Article by Corrigan Peters of Richard Montgomery High School
Photo by Audrey Li of Montgomery Blair High School