Springside Chestnut Hill Academy's young ice hockey team opened its season last Tuesday on its home rink at the Wissahickon Skating Club.

Lawrenceville School, which has its own ice rink right on campus, sent over its "B" team to play the Blue Devils, and this group still presented a formidable challenge for host SCH.

The Devils managed to keep the Big Red off the scoreboard for the first 25 minutes, but the visitors found the net frequently after that and came away with a 6-1 victory.

Due to the youth of the team, Springside Chestnut Hill will be playing against JV teams from a number of other schools this winter. Ethan Eckert and Brendan Russell are the only seniors on the squad, and 12 of the 17 players on the roster are in 10th, ninth, or eighth grade.

The Ice Devils are being led by a new head coach this year, Charles Proctor. He has many years of club coaching experience and has guided high school programs in the Downingtown school district and at the Delaware County Christian School. Proctor also runs Kinetic Chain Performance, which specializes in power skating instruction for hockey players. Matt Cassidy is the assistant coach for Springside Chestnut Hill this winter.

Last Tuesday, the Blue Devils were dominated by visiting Lawrenceville at the outset of the match, as the Big Red piled up a 10-0 advantage in the shot column over the first 10 minutes. The shot totals stood at a somewhat more respectable 19-3 at the end of the first period, as the locals steadied themselves. In transition, they found that they fared better when they moved up the ice with short passes rather than trying to stickhandle past the Larries.

Despite the long periods they spent on offense, the visitors weren't able to get the puck past SCH sophomore goalie Alex Luce until late in the second period. The first goal came in a transition sequence, as Bobby Frascella scored with 4:01 remaining in the second round. Playing man-down near the end of the period, the visitors netted a second goal with 33.4 seconds left courtesy of Will Oshrin.

Early in the third period, Lawrenceville scored three goals in rapid succession. Markers by Frascella, Kingsley Du, and Noah Kelly gave the guests a 5-0 lead with 12:55 remaining in the game. In between the fourth and fifth goals, SCH changed goalies, with Luce, the starter, being replaced by freshman Tristan Loder.

At the time of the fifth goal by the Big Red, Springside Chestnut Hill called a time-out, and the Devils would return to break the Lawrenceville shutout less than a minute later as sophomore Sam Bevan scored with 11:57 left to play.

With a little under seven minutes remaining, the final score of 6-1 went up on the board with a goal by Lawrenceville's Townsend Deery.

On the SCH team this year the juniors are only slightly more numerous that the seniors, with Finn Cooper, Brian Dougherty, and Brody Saccomandi representing the 11th grade. 

The large sophomore class includes Bevan, Luce, fellow goalie Tobey Schwartz, Ted Giannone, Sean Simmonds and Asa Zimmerman. The freshman contingent consists of Loder, Corin Cooper, Krishan Gandhi, Ben Shmelzer and Joe Ward. Sam Bartle, an eighth-grader, rounds out the roster.