Reitz Journalism

Katie Greenwell
Staff Writer

A cold and icy sport full of violence, skates, sticks, a puck, and a lot of hardworking, determined boys is what you get when you watch Reitz hockey. Very few people know about Reitz hockey team and it’s not actually connected with the EVSC. When sports are connected with the school system, pretty much everything is paid for.

Not only do the hockey players have to pay to be on the team, they have to buy their own equipment, too. Skates cost about $100; sticks: $40-$50; helmets: $100 and that’s just the bulk of it. The only thing Reitz provides is the jerseys and the socks. If you get cheap equipment that’s somewhat decent, it’s probably going to end up being around $400 or $500, plus the $375 to join the team. That’s really expensive just to play hockey! So why would the guys spend their money on it?
“I love hockey. It’s one of the greatest sports there is. I have played for twelve years now and it never gets old,” says the wingman Justin Hertel, #13.
We actually have eight guys and a girl from different schools playing on our team right now since their schools don’t have a hockey team.
“It is nice playing on a team with kids from other schools because I get to meet new people and make new friends. Once we put on our jerseys, it doesn’t even really matter what school we go to because we are all on the same team,” says goalie Dustin Scheller from Mater Dei.
As much as the boys love hockey, they’d really love some support, too! I’ve been to every one of the hockey games and the support the team gets is horrible, especially compared to Harrison and Memorial. There will be a huge lake of their school with faces painted, all going crazy, and even yelling their own chants….and then there will be a little puddle of fans for the Reitz team. It’s ridiculous.
“The support from Reitz right now is a little on the pathetic side. We actually have more people from Mater Dei and Mt. Vernon that come to cheer us on than actual Reitz people,” says #10, the wingman Chris Palmer.
This year we’ve beat Memorial twice. They were really good last year and we only beat them once. This year they’re just as good and we’re kicking their butts. Out of the four other teams (North, Harrison, Memorial, Castle) the only one we haven’t beat is the all-mighty Harrison (number one in state). We’ve only lost by one point each game, but the team thinks it could be because of the support they get and we don’t get.
“It’d be nice to see some blue and gray in the crowd. The last few times we actually had fans come to the games, we won. I think the team does better when they hear cheers after making a good play.”
The score of hockey right now is 5-6. If we win the game on February 20th and North loses their game against Harrison, we’ll be second place in standing and go to tournament. We have a really good chance of winning state.
Once we get our momentum going, it’s hard to get us to stop. And why wouldn’t you want to go to our hockey games? You get to see high school students hitting the crud out of other people, especially defense Chris Deig!”
Don’t know if you like hockey? Want to come support? The games are every Wednesday at Swonder’s ice arena. They start at 8:00 and last somewhere around an hour to an hour and a half. Bring $2 to get in and come help support the Reitz hockey team!