Sports

Braves hope to use senior leadership to get to State in 2011-12

By Tyler Ohmann

11/22/2011

The dozen seniors that are on this years Bottineau Braves hockey squad swallowed a bitter pill last year when their team was eliminated one game short of the state tournament.

This year those seniors hope to make that ending a sweeter one.

“We’re pretty excited. We’re looking good this year, better than last year, so it should be a pretty good season,” said senior Logan Millican. “We want to do better than last year, and make sure that we make it to the state tournament this year.”

Millican is the returning scorer from last season. He had 31 goals and 21 assists and was tied for the top goal-scorer in the state and fifth in points.

“Hopefully I get better, and improve from last year,” Millican said.

But he also hopes to get others involved.

“We’ve been involving everyone and making them all part of the team,” Millican said.

The Braves lost leading scorer from a year ago Seth Serhienko, who was second in the state in scoring with 57 points. He graduated and is now playing for Dakota College at Bottineau.

Braves Head Coach David Hoff, hopes that the team can find a leader among the plethora of seniors.

“We have 12 seniors this year, and I’ve talked to them the past couple weeks about that part of their job is leadership,” Hoff said. “The other part is making others better, pushing kids and telling them “nice job,” the little things that we need to get better.”

“This team isn’t about the seniors, but if we have success at the end of the season it will be because of what that group did with their leadership,” Hoff added.

The Braves do return some high scorers in sophomore Harrison Aide (42), senior Kyle Volk (28), Cody Longie (27), Jackson Bernstein (24) and Nick Monson (20). Monson, a senior this year, only played 15 games last year after injuring his shoulder midway through the season.

“We have a lot of skill, but the theme I’ve pushed this year is that we need to be gritty not pretty,” Hoff said. “One of the things that caught up with us last year is that we didn’t play well in the tight spots in front of the net. We’ve really stressed that, and we have the kids that can do that.”

“I like where we are at, but this is just the start of the season. We have four months to get better, 60 practices to get better,” Hoff added.

One thing that Hoff switched up this year is the elimination of the Bottineau holiday tournament. Instead the Braves will travel to Thief River Falls to take on Thief River Falls, Crookston and Hermantown.

Also changes in the schedule include a game against West Fargo.

“If we want to push this thing and say: ‘hey, we’re one of the best teams in the state,’ we have opportunities to prove that now,” Hoff said about the 2011-12 schedule.

Millican is happy with the stiffer non-region competition as well. 

“It will help us improve, so that when we get to the state tournament we will be ready for that competition,” Millican said. “We’ve been practicing really hard, and hopefully everything will work out.”

Hoff has pretty lofty aspirations this season, and thinks the Braves have a shot at being one of the top teams in the entire state.

“I hope that we will be a top tier team in the West Region, and I think we should be able to compete with the top teams in the east and the west,” Hoff said. “I think the two Bismarck’s are the top two teams, and then I like the young players at Jamestown, Minot, Mandan, they will be the second group of teams behind the two Bismarck’s. I certainly expect us to compete with all of those teams.”

The Braves began practice on Nov. 7 and will open their season Saturday at home against Devils Lake.

Hoff is looking forward to seeing the athletes out in a game situation.

“It is going to be interesting from a coach’s prospective to see where these kids are,” Hoff said. “Were they where I thought they’d be, were they not where I thought they’d be, and start to sort things out. For most of the kids it will be, we practiced for three weeks, it’s time to play someone wearing a different colored uniform.”

The Braves have 28 athletes on their roster this season, 20 are from Bottineau High School, seven from Rugby and one from Rolette.

“We’re deep,” Hoff said. “We have to get in a game situation to see how they respond, but it’s my 23rd year and I have never seen a team that’s this deep.”

The Braves finished 16-8 overall last season, and were 11-4 in the West Region, a third place regular season finish. They were then upset by Mandan in the West Region tournament, and were eliminated by Bismarck High in the final round of the tourney.

Hoff hopes that letdown at the end of last season can be spun to a positive this season.

“We have a lot of skill, a lot of kids back, but maybe that is the little extra motivation we need to make sure we take care of business,” Hoff said.