Monroe tops Houston to earn 3A state hockey title

FAIRBANKS — Oh how sweet it is for the Monroe Catholic High School Hockey team.

The Rams capped another stellar season on Saturday night by winning the ASAA First National Cup Greatland State Hockey State Championship, by defeating the Houston Hawks 6-0 in front of a home town crowd of several hundred Monroe faithful at the Big Dipper Ice Arena.

“It felt great to win it at home,” said Monroe Catholic senior goaltender Nate Jankowski, who recorded shutouts in both games of the state tournament.

The Rams blanked the Hutchison Hawks 10-0 in Friday night’s semifinal contest and Jankowski stopped all 15 shots that came his way in Saturday night’s championship game to earn Player of the Game honors.

“We’ve been working toward this all year and it feels great to get it done in front of our home crowd here in Fairbanks,” Jankowski said after the Rams earned their second consecutive state championship.

Senior captain Michael Coiley, who had a goal and two assists on Saturday night, concurred.

“The most special part of this is that the whole school is here,” Coiley said. “All of our friends and family are here to enjoy it with us.”

This is the first year the Greatland Hockey State Championships have been held in Fairbanks.

Monroe coach Shawn Lundgren said the Rams have a special bond that makes the team hard to beat.

“The biggest thing is that they play together and for each other,” Lundgren said. “They are a family. They play hard and the sacrifice for each other.”

The championship game couldn’t have started out any better for the Rams, who scored two goals in the first 97 seconds to set the tone for championship Saturday.

“That made all the difference in the world,” Lundgren said. “We knew it was going to be a physical hockey game, but those goals allowed us to settle in and play our style of hockey.”

Freshman Caleb Sanborn scored the only goal Monroe Catholic needed at the 1:10 mark of the first period when he knocked home a rebound of a shot by freshman defenseman Evan Fritze.

“It was an amazing feeling,” Sanborn said. “It gave us some momentum and got things going our way.”

Just 27 seconds later, junior forward Matias Szumigala scored off an assist from Coiley to give the Rams a 2-0 lead.

“That good start meant everything,” Coiley said. “We kept it rolling from there.”

The Rams didn’t score again until late in the second period when sophomore Riley Ott found the back of the net with an unassisted wraparound goal at the 13:54 mark.

Jankowski came up with two big saves early in the third period to keep Houston off the scoreboard and his teammates added three power-play goals in the third period to wrap up the state title.

“We tried to eliminate as many shots in front of him as we could, but he stepped up when we needed him,” Lundgren said. “He didn’t play a lot when he was a freshman but he’s grown to become the backbone of our hockey team.”

Szumigala, Coiley and Fritze accounted for the Rams’ third-period power-play goals, which came in the span of three minutes starting at the 8:36 mark.

That set the stage for the Rams raucous on-ice celebration in front of their home town fans when time finally ran out in the third period.

The Hutchison Hawks earned third place in the five-team tournament by posting a 3-2 win against the Glennallen-Kenny Lake Panthers earlier Saturday.

Tournament awards

The Glennallen-Kenny Lake Hawks earned the team Sportsmanship trophy and they also had the highest team grade-point average with a 3.58.

Monroe’s Michael Coiley, Caleb Sanborn, Riley Ott and Nate Jankowski were named to the all-tournament team along with Houston’s Isaac Smoldon and Reed Humphreys, Hutchison’s Alec Eastey and Glennallen-Kenny Lake’s Aidan Rude.

Contact the News-Miner sports department at 459-7581.