If it was up to junior defenseman Ian Biggers, Lake Region’s jump to the varsity level in ice hockey next season would be a sure thing.

“We’re ready,” he said after the Lakers out-skated Oxford Hills for an 8-1 win at Bridgton Academy last week.

The Thursday night win was the team’s third straight to open the season, a marked improvement over the program’s past three winters of junior varsity action.

And though such a move requires a bit more negotiation, the 3-0 start for the Lakers helps support those ambitious hopes for the program.

Coach Dave Lepage also believes his team, which now numbers about 20 players, could be up to the task, but admits he wants to see continued improvement this winter.

“We’ve been a JV program for three years,” Lepage said. “And you can stay a JV team as long as you want. We’ll have to have a long conversation with our athletic director (Todd Sampson) first.

“The only real question is, do we have the players to do it,” he said. “And I think we have the players. I think we could play a bunch of class A teams and do well.”

Lake Region is currently a Class B school.

One difference this winter is that it’s not just off-season athletes from other sports signing up for the team, said Biggers, whose father started the Naples recreation league when Ian was in the third grade.

“We used to have a lot of big kids who played football and were looking for a winter sport,” he said. “But now we have hockey players coming up. These young kids coming in are great.”

The junior defenseman admits that with higher expectations the practices have been getting more serious.

“We skate a lot more in practice,” he said. “And I’m not in the best shape and it’s not my favorite thing to do, but I definitely see it paying off.”

The team has only one senior this season, defenseman Bryant Libby, and has built a framework around a solid crew of eight juniors. But in addition to four sophomores, there are seven freshmen getting their feet wet in the program.

Lepage has also pieced together a trio of goalkeepers who have teamed to do a solid job guarding the net. A pair of girls have been getting most of the playing time, junior Gabrielle Tomkinson, who has made the move to ice after playing street hockey in Virginia before she moved to Maine, and junior Kristine Hamaty, who plays goal for the successful Lakers field hockey team. Dylan Adams is another talented junior goalie Lepage is counting on this winter.

After taking down Poland/Gray-New Gloucester, 3-2, on Dec. 8, then beating Lisbon-Oak Hill, 8-7, Dec. 12, the Lakers flexed their muscle with the win over Oxford Hills.

Tavish Leland and Keith Rickett each recorded hat tricks in the win over the Vikings at Bridgeton Academy’s rink, where the team’s home games are played.

Rickett opened the scoring at the 5:20 mark after taking a pass from Libby and muscling by the defense to get a clear shot on the Oxford Hills’ goal. The Vikings stormed right back 25 seconds later and beat Hamaty to tie the game at one.

Libby later put Laker Region ahead for good after a feed from Chris Hawes later in the first. The Lakers closed that period with a goal by Nick Marshall, who was assisted by Billy Skarbinski, to put them up by a pair.

The Lakers had the advantage of five Viking penalties in period two, but Leland was the only goal scorer that period, digging the puck out of the corner and firing in a back-handed power play goal at the 4:45 mark.

In the final frame, both Leland and Rickett had two goals apiece to close out their hat tricks with Dan Casey collecting one assist on Leland’s second score.

The Lakers put their unbeaten record on the line Wednesday when they travel to Hebron to take on Poland/GNG in a rematch.

Copy the Story Link