Despite a short bench, the Kearsley Brandon Holly United hockey team ended the 2014-15 season with a Flint Metro League title, led by Flint Metro Coach of the Year Steve Yuchasz.
‘Going into the season we set some pretty lofty goals, winning the Flint Metro among them,? said Yuchasz.
‘Right out of the gate we actually struggled a bit, losing our first four games. We made some adjustments with player positioning as well as our goalie assignments. Initially we had Brent Luxon in net as well as Derek Nishek. Then Connor Martin came out later as he was coming back from a severe injury. We ended up moving Derek to defense and Connor assumed the starting goalie duties. We won 10 of our next 11 games putting together a nice little streak.. We clinched the Flint Metro League on Feb. 18 with an 8-0 win over Flushing. The last month of the season was really tough. The short bench started to catch up to us as we suffered a couple of injuries and fatigue started to show. We really only had 11 qualified skaters on a good day as three of our players had never really played hockey at all.?
‘The penalty kill was probably the strongest facet of our game,? he said. ‘With Kirk Wells, Nate Flanagan, Makenzie Bolton and Derek Nishek stepping up to the opportunity. Also, five of our losses were by one goal, usually a result of fatigue in the third period unfortunately.?
The team was 1-7-2 the last month, finishing the regular season at 11-11-2. And were 4-1-1 in league play.
‘We ended up losing to Goodrich in our first pre-regional game,? he said. ‘Unfortunately, we lost our leading scorer, Shawn Larsen, 10 minutes into the game. That threw everything off with regard to our lines and we just couldn’t recover.
‘While we didn’t reach all our preseason goals, all in all it was a pretty successful season,? he said. ‘We managed to compete even though on most days we only had two lines against teams fielding 3 or 4 lines. We had several players recieve some nice post season honors as well.?
Shawn Larsen, First team Flint Metro and All State Honorable mention at forward (43 goals, 21 assists), tied for seventh in the state.
Kross Kenny, First team Flint Metro at forward (21 goals, 33 assists).
Scottie Brauher, second team Flint Metro, All State Honorable Mention at defense (23 goals, 17 assists) Steven Niles, first team Flint Metro at defense.
Connor Martin, first team Flint Metro at goalie.
Jesse Zorn and Evan Flood, Flint Metro Honorable Mention.