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2012-2013 Hockey Team Awards
This sport creates a community; first among the skaters and coaches and the circle extends to family/friends. The travel to the Bears’ Den, away games and the holiday tournament makes this a close group.
At the end of the season, the Captains’ Moms (this year’s exceptional duo–Ms. Buckingham and Ms. Shue) put together an evening that brings each year’s journey to a close. The boys arrive and disappear to whatever electronic game that is de rigeur while the adults connect once again.
The 2012-2013 season merited such closure and celebration. The senior leadership helped bring a young roster to an 3rd consecutive IAC championship, but most importantly inculcated them with the Bear way of pursuing excellence with energy, enthusiasm, focus and class.
Coach Gammill on behalf of his team, Coaches Farnstrom, Lubin and Anas, reviewed the efforts of the eight seniors, who made this year so special. His observations about each were not just about sport, but true to the Landon teacher/coach/mentor model, were about who these young men are, what they have contributed to this team and to Landon and what they can do in the future. For the parents of seniors and those whose boys will be under the tutelage of these coaches for the next few years, it was an impressive display of insight, caring and vision.
The term “family” is frequently used to describe such situations, but all too often, it is an empty phrase. With these players and their coaches as well as the biologically connected relatives, this was and is a FAMILY.
The awards fall into two categories—league and team. Coach Gammill explained that the IAC rules involve nominations by all of the league coaches and out of that iteration, five Bears were considered. The final vote narrowed it to three Landon honorees:
Graham Shue (SR) F
Sam Kroll (SR) G
Jack Barton (JR) F/D
{note: the history of IAC, MAPHL and worst of all WaPo All Met awards indicates that merit is not the sole or even primary basis for deciding the recipients of these honors. There is, for example, no doubt that all five (or more) of the Bear nominees deserved All IAC status; MAPHL will be worse and All Met recognition correlates with that publication’s need to sell newspapers.}
Perhaps more meaningful to the boys were the considered judgments of their coaches. Tradition has set the expectations that this recognition would be focused on seniors and this year’s awards were as follows:
COACHES AWARD: a player or players, who do all that is asked of him or them, from the daily small tasks that make the team function to the selfless, major assignments that contribute to success:
JACK SEARS
WILL BUCKINGHAM
MVP: that player whom everyone valued, upon whom all relied to make that KEY play:
SAM KROLL
BRIAN FISHMAN AWARD: an award endowed by the family of this former Bear, who worked for USA Hockey and other related jobs; to recognize a player exhibiting the highest levels of dedication, integrity and enthusiasm:
GRAHAM SHUE
The team intentionally does not publish statistics during the course of the season, but here are the leaders in the major categories:
Goals Scored
Shue 16
Lindner 12
Rupp 10
Buckingham 9
Kim 8
Assists
Kim 14
Barton 12
Shue 9
Buckingham 9
Points
Shue 25
Kim 22
Barton 19
Buckingham 18
Rupp 17
Lindner 15
Soraci 15
+/- Ratings (being on ice for goal for [+1] and for goal against [-1])
Shue +38
Barton +32
Buckingham +30
Kim +30
Norwinski +28
Ruttenberg +26
The good news is that an adequate number of these players are underclassmen.
One final note from my list serve which distributes these posts—the series of notes about hockey have accumulated almost 10,000 page reads and those viewing the exploits have email addresses in almost 30 states and 10 countries including several Bears serving overseas.
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