The Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé Crimson Bears hockey team took home its biggest win of the season despite a mixed bag of wins and losses this past weekend after the team headed north to Anchorage and Houston for away games.
“13-0 us the biggest of the year and the biggest for many years,” head coach Matthew Boline said.
The Crimson Bears had a hot start Thursday night to kick off the tournament pulling in a whopping 13-0 lead during a battle of the bears between Juneau’s Crimson Bears and Anchorage’s Bartlett High School Golden Bears.
“It was quite a lopsided game,” head coach Matthew Boline said.
Boline said the game was a great kickoff to the weekend’s games and was a good opportunity to get all players a lot of ice time. The first five goals of the night came in the first period, followed by three in the second and another five in the third.
The 13 goals came from a total of eight JDHS players with sophomore Luke Bovitz stacking up three goals for his first hat trick of his high school career along with senior team captain Lake Barlett also scoring his first hatty of his career as well said Boline.
“He scored them all the right way — crashing the net and getting gritty,” Boline said about Barlett’s stellar performance Thursday night.
The following night the second game of the tournament against Houston High School’s Hawks proved less fruitful than the night prior for the Crimson Bears with Houston pulling through with a 9-1 win on its home ice.
“I would say they’re one, if not the strongest team in the state,” Boline said. “They’re a smaller school but really tough, it was a good game.”
The Crimson Bears’ only goal of the night came in the first period from Bovitz with an assist by junior Caden Johns.
Following the loss, Boline said it seemed to work as fuel for a comeback as during the second match between the two teams’ JDHS started the first period with a 1-0 lead thanks to senior assistant captain Anna Dale pulling through with an unassisted goal.
However, Houston was able to snag its own first goal of the night later in the first period, followed by a second goal with only seconds left in the second period which ultimately gave the team the upper hand for the remainder of the game, winning 2-1.
“We tried as hard as we could,” Boline said. “The game was great and I think it really highlighted the kind of hockey we want to be playing and shows how we can bounce back and show some resiliency — win or lose it’s important that we play the right way and we did that.”
The Crimson Bears are set to have their last games of the regular season this weekend with home games set for Friday and Saturday against the Tri-Valley Warriors. The Saturday night game at 6:45 p.m. is set to be extra special as it is the #LivelikeMatthewC game, which honors former JDHS player Matthew Campbell who in June 2019 was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer, and died the year following at the age of 25. Current player and senior assistant captain Brandon Campbell is his younger brother and wears the same No. 20 jersey.
The ticket sales of the game will be donated toward Matthew Campbell’s academic memorial scholarship fund.
• Contact reporter Clarise Larson at clarise.larson@juneauempire.com or (651)-528-1807. Follow her on Twitter at @clariselarson.
