AAA Stars faceoff during their black and white game (Byron Hildebrand/Facebook)

By Austin Mattes

U18 AAA Stars

High hopes for the Stars despite pre-season loss

Sep 18, 2024 | 2:55 PM

The U18 AAA Battlefords Stars kicked off their pre-season yesterday with a game against the Swift Current Legionnaires. Despite the 4-1 loss, Head Coach Dale Grayston said they will keep improving and look forward to the rest of the pre-season.

“In terms of team play, we should keep improving. We’ve got a couple more preseason games to put more stuff in place, so we’re looking forward to the learning process and we got a lot of young guys on the team this year and rookies this year, so we just have to be patient with how they learn to play with each other.”

With only six expected returning players, Waylon Gardipy, Caleb Pockrant, Kash Alger-East, Lukamus Lehman, Millar Kramer and Nick Greenwood. Grayston said that he expects a good year and leadership from the vets.

“We have the three veterans up front and then on the back end we have two vets that are there, Lukamus Lehman and Millar Kramer and we are looking for good leadership from all of them. Then our goalie we have, just the one veteran in net as well, Nick Greenwood and we’re looking for a big year from him.”

After finishing off last season 17-26-1, Grayston said that they focused on getting more speed and goaltending for the team this off season.

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“We want to improve our team’s speed and I think we’ve done that and we wanted to make sure that we had good goalies in place. Luke Norman has spent some time out in Prince George with the Cougars. He’s also an Estevan Bruin list, so we think we’ve done pretty good there but the main thing we wanted was a little faster team on the ice.”

One of the most important things Grayston wants to see from the team this year is work ethic and attitude.

“We just want good team spirit that can really learn to support each other. We do want to see some good little improvements in all of those tactical things we’re doing but when it comes to a team sport, you really have to have players that have a good grasp on being honest with where they’re at and that they bring a good positive attitude and a good great work ethic.”

The Stars have two more pre-season games before they get into the regular season, one on Sept. 20 on the road and the other one on Sept. 22 at home, both against Lloydminster.

Their home opener and first game of the season will be Saturday, Sept. 28 against the Regina Pat Canadians, 4:30 p.m. at the Access Communications Centre.

The AAA Sharks were also in the process of getting ready for the regular season this past weekend. They grabbed the bronze medal at the Firestarter tournament in Calgary, beating the St. Albert Raiders Slash 4-1.