Wichita Thunder junior hockey team wins regional high school league championship
It’s common to hear about high school athletes playing club sports like basketball, soccer and volleyball.
Few know that there’s actually an opportunity to play club hockey in Wichita. Even fewer know that the Wichita Thunder junior team is actually the best in the region, having just claimed the Mid America High School Hockey League championship on Monday to conclude a dominant 2021-22 season.
The team consists of high school athletes in the Wichita area from schools like Derby, Wichita Northwest, Trinity Academy, Valley Center, Andover, Maize, Goddard, Kingman and Wichita Southeast. They practice three times a week at the Wichita Ice Center and play a 22-game regular season in a 10-team league with teams from Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Wichita finished 17-4-1 to win the regular-season title, then completed a sweep with a 5-1 win over the Northwest Arkansas Ice Hogs on Monday.
“It’s super cool because we’re not like your normal high school team in 6A, we don’t get too much recognition,” said assistant captain Easton Norris, a junior at Trinity Academy who was named the championship MVP. “It’s super awesome to be able to represent Wichita and be able to show that we can play some hockey here too.”
Many of the players are multi-sport athletes who play sports for their high schools in the fall and spring. But in the winter, they come together from all around the area to play hockey together.
Because they’re not all from the same school, Norris said it’s similar to playing on a summer baseball team.
“In your normal high school sports, you just play with the people who are going to school with you,” Norris said. “But playing club hockey, you get to know kids from all around Wichita and build new friendships with other people.”
That special chemistry was on display this entire season, as the team had to replace nine graduating seniors from last year’s roster. Wichita was able to do it with an infusion of young talent mixed with veterans like Norris, who scored a hat trick in the championship game and led the league in points (44) with 27 goals and 17 assists.
Leadership also came from the team’s two seniors in Carson Dutcher (Derby), who finished fourth in the league in scoring with 37 points, and Griffin Barker (Northwest), the team captain who was third on the team in scoring with 33 points. The trio made up the highest-scoring attack in the league, which averaged better than five goals per game.
“We were just a very fast-skating team this year,” head coach Jeff Cline said. “We were able to move the puck quickly and we’ve got some guys that can finish and score some goals. A lot of these kids have been playing together for the last 10 years, so we had some pretty good chemistry.”
Other MAHSHL all-conference players included sophomore Aiden Fyffe (a defenseman from Andover) and sophomore David Gifford (a goaltender from Valley Center), while juniors Colby Byers and Ewan Cline and sophomore Peyton Novak were named honorable mention.
For many players, like Norris, winning a championship wearing a Thunder uniform was a dream come true.
“I was going to Wichita Thunder games ever since I can remember,” Norris said. “I was born into it. I remember when I was real little, my mom saw them let the peewee kids skate out on the rink, so she would dress me up in pads. That’s what I did back then and now it’s so cool to be able to play for the junior team.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
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