SAHA teams reflect on CSSHL playoffs

By JAMES TUBB on March 22, 2023.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The South Alberta Hockey Academy men’s and women’s teams seasons came to a close last weekend as the Canadian Sport School Hockey League wrapped up its playoff tournaments.

The SAHA women’s team made its way to the semifinals before ultimately falling 4-3 against Shawnigan Lake School. The semifinals appearance was an improvement on the year prior, where they lost in the quarter-finals.

Head coach Evan Vossen says everything they had been working on since the start of the season in September fell into place heading into the playoffs in Penticton.

“We’re obviously extremely proud of the girls and everybody has been involved this year, we put a lot of work in it,” Vossen said. “I know the group we had returning, our core was obviously a big piece for us. That’s something we wanted to utilize from day one. That group did a really good job of representing last year at the playoffs and got to take it one step further again this year. We have a lot of the people that are graduating who really left their mark on our program.”

The SAHA women’s team has nine players graduating from the program, with six of them already committed to playing hockey at the school level next year. It’s something Vossen is proud to see.

“That’s a huge feather in their hat because the work they put in,” Vossen said. “It’s great for us and for myself to see and there’s probably a handful of girls who have been with us since day one. So those last three years starting at scratch and building and being able to leave this program and this team in a better place than how they found it is huge.

“They’ve done a lot of work over that span in building this program, I can’t thank them enough for that and I am really looking forward to watching their progress.”

The team’s accolades at the end of a 33-19-3 season include a third-place finish in the CSSHL playoffs, a silver medal from the Female World Sport School Challenge, a 3-0 record against Alberta college teams and sending two players, Kendal Davidson, Tea Pearce and coach Voeen to represent Alberta at the Canada Winter Games.

The SAHA men’s team lost in the quarter-finals of their playoff run, falling 4-3 against the Delta Hockey Academy. Head coach Brayden Desjardins says while the early season end is difficult, he’s happy with how much his team has developed.

“Our team’s about moving guys on to the next level and if they can learn some things from those environments, and obviously they got a taste of winning in December and what made us so successful, and maybe we didn’t execute to that level, so if they can take a few things and learn from what happened, that’s the end goal,” Desjardins said.

SAHA picked up early accolades in the season, capturing the newly minted Circle K Classic eight months after winning the same tournament, then called the Mac’s championship. They finished the regular season with a record of 23-10-2. Desjardins says the eight graduating players played a big role in their success and describes his team as a special group of players and men.

“It’ll be a tough team to let go of, and the biggest thing is when they look back at this team it will be how much they loved each other,” Desjardins said. “They love coming to the rink, you always see guys with different guys, so when you get a team that’s not super clicky and they all buy in and come together with purpose, it’s special. It’ll be funny when these guys look back in five or six years and they’re like, ‘How did we all play on the same U18 team together?’

“It’s a team these guys will talk about for a long time. It sucks that it ended the way it did but that’s the way hockey goes. If I had anything to say about this team or if anybody wanted to talk about us as a group, they could talk to anybody in that room and it’d be about how close that team is and how much they love being together. At the end of the day, that’s one of the most satisfying things as a coach to see a team that just likes being together.”

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