Little Experience for Littleton, No Problem

Sometimes young hockey players catch on a bit quicker than others. That was the case for the Littleton Bantam A Red team.

With only six second-year players on their squad, and the rest first-year guys, the Hawks put together a rather impressive season winning five of their six championship games in tournaments.
Their league record was 25-0-4 while the overall mark turned out to be 47-3-5.

“I’ve never been apart of a team that had been so successful so fast,” said assistant coach Joel Hart. “Winning just became contagious once they believed in their abilities.”

It’s hard to figure out exactly why they had so much success but Hart believes it was a mix of a lot of different things. There was a strong focus on off-ice training which stressed core strength and endurance but a lot of the success came from intangibles.

“On every team there are always a couple bad apples,” Hart explained. “We had none. We also had a group of guys that came to the rink to work and learn. And it was that hard work that beat out skill.”

Of course there had to be quite a bit of skill too in order to win the President’s Day, Ice Ranch Horseshoe, Aspen Fall Face Off, Coyotes MLK Invitational tournaments. Then they carried their streak into the league playoffs and onto their ultimate goal: The Colorado three-peat. That meant the Hawks won their league outright, followed by the league playoffs and eventually the state championship.

“Pure elations,” was how Hart described the feeling. “Nothing better than to see the end result for these kids after all the hard work they put in. It brought chills because I was able to relive my childhood memories of youth hockey.”
And the winning tradition won’t stop there. For these hockey players this is only the beginning.
“As far as hockey goes, this year will give them the confidence to move up next year.”
Teams better watch out because the Littleton Hawks Bantam A Red catch on quick. "