The first two weeks of the season have been no walk in the park for Kent, as four of the team’s first six contests have pitted them against some of the region's best.
Despite a .500 record, the Lions are trudging their way through a gauntlet of early-season tests and proving themselves as a formidable opponent in Founders League competition and beyond.
Things won’t get much easier as the season wears on, but Dale Reinhardt and his team are welcoming of the challenge.
“I think we’ve learned a ton, and I think we’ve built a ton of confidence, too. If you look at our last week — KUA, Brunswick, Gunn and Salisbury — it doesn’t get much tougher than that,” said Reinhardt, in his ninth season behind the Connecticut prep school's bench.
"For us to come out 2-2 with the two games we lost being one-goal games, we know we can play with anybody.”
It was an affirming week for the Lions, who felt confident about their group ahead of the season. After the unprecedented nature of the past season and a host of newcomers joining the team in the defensive end, however, it was anybody’s guess as to how the first couple of weeks would play out.
A core group of seniors has been instrumental in pushing the team in the right direction early on. In addition to their roles as leaders, those seniors are also pulling the bulk of the weight in the scoring department.
Six games in, five seniors -- all born in 2003 -- are the scoring leaders for Kent. Geno McEnery and Dante Palombo lead the way as the only point-getters to have surpassed the 10-point mark.
Classmates Max Resnick, Cole Watson and Jake Kraft round out the top-5 scoring list. Michael Hurst (Allison Park, Pa.) is the final member of the senior class up front.
“Those guys have been huge,” Reinhardt said of the top-six forward group. “We’ve got some really good sophomores too, but those six ‘03 guys are definitely the engine for our offense.”
On the blue line, where the defensive unit is made up mostly of ’05s and ’06s, the young guns have made good strides at the start of the campaign.
“We knew we were going to be young and pretty inexperienced, so we expected that we would have to score a lot of goals and maybe get in some shootouts early on, but our defense has actually acclimated a lot quicker than I expected," Reinhardt said.
In the net, a young goaltending duo of Harrison Fogel (Sandy Springs, Ga.) and sophomore Aidan Hopewell (Ashburn, Va.) have been sharing the load at the start.
Hopewell, a noteworthy member of the 2005 birth year, is playing his first season of prep hockey after attending USA Hockey Select 16 Player Development Camp over the summer. The Virginia native was picked in both the 2021 OHL and USHL drafts.
A Georgia native in his second season at Kent, Fogel has impressed due to his offseason development, Reinhardt said, making it difficult for the staff to go with a true No. 1.
“I don’t know that we expected to have this much of a goalie battle, but they’ve both played really well and had their moments, so it’s still kind of an ongoing thing for us where I think they’re both going to play," the head coach said.
It’s an important weekend for the team for more reasons than one.
"The Christmas tournaments are always a ton of fun for our kids," Reinhardt said. "(They) get to focus on hockey for a couple of days, not the whole hockey and school thing at the same time.
"(As a team), it’s going to be about continuing to play our game and being the best version of ourselves. We feel like when we do that is when we’re really effective.”
Perhaps most anticipated about the coming weekend is the Lions’ third matchup of the young season with Frederick Gunn.
“There’s a little bit of a rivalry there,” Reinhardt said of his team’s recent contests with the in-state Highlanders. “We scrimmaged them up at Berkshire and it was a little bit of a chippy game. Then, they came here last week and it was definitely a high-emotion game, which I don’t think we did a great job of handling. I think we got caught up in the emotions a little too much, so going into that one for sure, the focus is just do what we do well, focus on what makes us effective as a team and not get wrapped up in the emotions.
“When we execute the way we want to, there’s nobody we can’t play with and I think we’ve proven that. It’s just making sure we stick to that.”
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