Dissapointing finish for Souderton

The season always ends in disappointment unless you win a championship, but some seasons are more disappointing than others. Souderton thought it was lined up this year for a big run. It had decent goaltending, a solid defense group, and some explosive forwards. But for some reason, putting that together game after game was an issue all season long. The Indians got up for some big games, including those against rivals Pennridge and North Penn.
But then it had some clunker losses. That trend reared its ugly head once and for all last week, as Souderton was ousted in the first round of the Class AA Flyers Cup playoffs by Cumberland Valley, in a game the Indians seemed in control of most of the way. “We were close. We were all a team. I think a couple of games people maybe showed that they didn’t want to play, and other people had to get on them to get in the game,” Souderton senior Dan Bernardo said. “Some people let down sometimes, and we don’t know why.”
This is what happens in sports. It leaves coaches scratching their heads. Only
three area teams are still playing, and if Pennridge or CB West doesn’t go much farther, those coaches will be scratching their heads too. Maybe Souderton can come back and do it next season, when it’s less expected. It will still have a formidable defense. “We lost all our scorers, and that’s the problem,” coach Tom Coopersmith said. “We lose Bernardo, Dan Flanagan,the oldest McCarthy (Rob). The younger one (Mike) is good if he gets his head in the game and plays. And we have all our goalies back, and another kid on the JV team that’s just as good, who’s going to push my No. 2. Defensively,
we’ll be fine.” So Coopersmith is already devising a method for utilizing this talent, and maybe sending him a team message about what didn’t work this
season, too. “We’ll go out and trap everybody. And they’ll be sick of it, but that’s what we’re going to do,” Coopersmith said. “I don’t care if we win 2-0. We’ll just trap the hell out of them, and that’s how we’ll win. Because we try to play two men in and one guy high, and sometimes we get both guys in and sometimes we don’t. So if you’re not going to press, it ain’t going to help us, so you might as well trap. “So that’s what we’re going to do all year. I already know what I’m doing. I’m ready. And we’ll win a bunch of games. Because we lost 10 or 12 games we shouldn’t have lost. That simple. We should’ve been a higher seed in this, we should’ve gone farther in our playoffs, and we didn’t.”
It’s more like Pennridge’s formula. They should win (the Flyers Cup),” said Coopersmith of the Rams. “I’ll be really disappointed if they don’t win it all.” Bernardo is departing, but agreed Souderton could still be pretty good next season. “If the whole team comes back, they’ll be the same thing.” Bernardo said.

Games to watch
The Class AA Flyers Cup games postponed Friday will be played Monday, and two of them have switched sites:
CB West vs. Cherokee (N.J.)
William Tennent vs. Washington Township (N.J.)
originally set for the Skate Zone-Voorhees (N.J.) have been moved to The Igloo in Mount Laurel, N.J.; game
times remain 7 p.m. (CB West) and 8:45 p.m. respectively. Pennridge will take on Methacton at Hatfield Monday at 8:45 p.m.

“They’ll lose the top line, but they have McCarthy coming up, (Kyle) Brown’s a junior, there’s lots of sophomores. West will be the favorite with that top line, but Souderton will be right up there. ” Bernardo, by the way, said he is mulling some offers to play club hockey next season.Unlike other sports, there is an extensive, organized, nation- wide club hockey system. “I’m split between Towson and West Virginia,” Bernardo said. “West Virginia called (last week) and I was originally just going to Towson, but then West Virginia said they wanted me to come out and play. Now I have to make a choice, and I have no clue either. Probably in the next couple weeks I’ll have to decide.” Hockey games are usually the last things to be called off because of the weather, so Friday’s Flyers Cup postponements were obviously for good reasons. Because rink time is expensive and a precious commodity, hockey teams and facilities will usually do everything possible to play. But, snow it was, which just means getting de-hyped and then re-hyped again next week (see box for postponements). The weather was a far cry, however, from what I was facing up in Albany, where I am working at the ECAC Division I hockey championships. Blizzard conditions made for an interesting weekend, to say the least. But the games went on. It only took me 6½ hours to drive here, but at least I didn’t do any 180s on the New York Thruway, as happened to me once on a trip in worse conditions, driving back from covering a hockey game at Dartmouth in New Hampshire. Then there was the time I was broadcasting a Princeton hockey game in Vermont, and traveling on the team bus. We returned amid that great ice storm of 1994, and it took me two hours in the Princeton parking lot, at 5 in the morning, to chip about a 2-inch thick sheet of ice off my car before I could drive home. Ahhh, the good old days. But it’s hockey, it’s what you do.