Clad in gold and brown, the Saint Francis High School ice hockey players weave through the rink as their sticks clack with their opponents. However, some on the team don’t always wear those colors. That is because SFHS ice hockey is not a ‘pure team’— many players come from other schools in the area, including MVHS.
Juniors Gillie Ross and Christopher Lamfalusi are two MVHS students who play for the SFHS ice hockey team. Though they also play in clubs, they chose to join high school hockey in the Sharks High School Hockey League to have fun playing hockey in a low pressure environment.
If a student’s school does not offer ice hockey, they can join another school’s ice hockey team as long as they go to a school in another school’s ice hockey district. SFHS first opened their ice hockey team to players from other schools in 2018, according to Head Coach Noah Temple. This year, the SFHS district in the Sharks High School Hockey League expanded to include MVHS, allowing MVHS students to play for SFHS. Ross initially played for Pioneer High School as a sophomore, but switched to SFHS this year because she believes the team is stronger. Now, 25 of the 33 players on the varsity team are from schools other than SFHS.
“The reason we’re trying to provide a high school team experience is because a lot of hockey players in the Bay Area only get to play for club teams,” Temple said. “If you are a hockey player and you’re in Monta Vista, you do not have an opportunity to play high school hockey. There are not 24 skaters at your school that would be able to form a team and then go compete against other high school teams.”
Temple says that the challenge with the SFHS team is to bring people who played on various teams together. Oftentimes the students on the SFHS team come from the San Jose Junior Sharks, a youth hockey club, and can contact High School Hockey Coordinator Shane Galaviz to learn which district they are zoned in. Afterwards, they can contact the coach for their high school hockey district to join the team.
After contacting Temple to play for SFHS, the players attended tryouts to determine which division to play in. Lamfalusi recalls that tryouts were a fun experience for him, despite his mother’s anxiety that he would not make the varsity team.
“My mom was like, ‘You need to go show them you’re not a JV player,’” Lamfalusi said. “I was like ‘In what world am I going to be put on JV?’ I went to the first practice and I smoked everyone, and then I was like ‘Yeah, I’m definitely on varsity.’ But my mom was super stressed.”
As both club and high school hockey players, Lamfalusi and Ross noticed the two leagues have vastly different environments. Club hockey is divided by gender while high school hockey is co-ed. Lamfalusi and Ross both agree that club hockey is much more competitive than high school hockey as well. Temple believes that part of the draw of high school hockey is a chance for students to play hockey in a lower stakes setting.
“High school hockey is where everyone just goes to mess around, get fancy goals, show off for the ladies in the stands,” Ross said. “It’s a lot more fun; there’s less pressure. Obviously, it still sucks when you lose, but club hockey is a lot more intense, a lot more serious. People that are typically playing at my level are planning to go to college playing NCAA DI to DIII.”
Lamfalusi believes that, while club hockey players have similar skill levels to one another, there is a larger skill gap in high school hockey. He says that some players on the JV team are beginners who want to learn how to skate and play hockey.
“People who aren’t as good at hockey take it more seriously, and the better a player is, the less seriously they take it,” Lamfalusi said. “Most people that I know are higher-level players, so when you see them in high school hockey, they’ll just mess around. They’ll try and have fun trying to score some goals and then the worst players are always all mad and they take it really seriously.”
Ross enjoys the extra time on the ice that playing high school hockey provides, and Lamfalusi enjoys playing with and getting to know a different team. While Lamfalusi says he would happily play for MVHS if they had a team, he doesn’t mind representing SFHS.
“I do wrestling also, so when I see SFHS tournaments, I don’t know if I’m supposed to root for them,” Lamfalusi said. “If it was MVHS versus SFHS, I’d root for MVHS, but SFHS versus other schools, I’d root for SFHS. I definitely feel loyalty or pride in playing for their team. It’s nice having another team to root for.”