The Freedom ice hockey team, comprised mostly of players from Freedom High in Tampa Palms and Wharton High on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., advanced to the Statewide Amateur Hockey of Florida (SAHOF) State championship tournament, where the Patriots fell in the semifinals.
Teams from all over the state converged for the two tiers of the State tournament, which was held for the first time ever at Florida Hospital Center Ice on S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel the weekend of Feb. 25-26.
Wiregrass, Freedom, Mitchell and West Boca (Spanish River) competed in the Tier 2 high school division. Tier 2 teams can draw from up to four schools, typically in the same general area, like Freedom.
The Tier 1 championships were also held at the same time. Those teams have rosters comprised entirely of athletes that attend a particular school.
For the tournament, Tier 2 teams had to limit the number of schools they could draw their athletes from to four. While the Freedom team is comprised mostly of athletes from Freedom and Wharton, they still had to make some painful cuts to the roster.
“It’s tough to compete with a limited roster,” Freedom head coach Dave Spataro said. “These kids played really hard and sort of made up for it. It would have been easy to lay down because we didn’t have this or that player but that attitude did not emerge in the locker room.”
In pool play, the Patriots fell to eventual champion Mitchell 4-2 and then beat West Boca. In their final pool game Feb. 26, they faced off against Wiregrass, a team that draws primarily from Wesley Chapel and Wiregrass Ranch high schools, in what proved to be a tough, physical game.
Wiregrass put on the early pressure, getting three shots on goal in just the first 10 minutes, but they were all saved by Freedom goalkeeper Dominik Rini, who attends high school at Tampa Chamberlain.
Freedom was able to run counters on fast breaks to get some pressure off their goalie, and with 4:29 left in the first period, forward Gianni Grieco got on the end of a 2-on-1 fast break and notched the game’s first goal.
Wiregrass charged right back and tied it 1-1, cleaning up a puck that ricocheted off of Rini. Freedom nearly took the lead in the waning moments of the first but entered the second period in a 1-1 tie.
The second period was dominated by Wiregrass, which took the lead just over a minute in on a shot by Joseph Davis. Two-and-a-half minutes later, Wiregrass made it 3-1 after a long flip shot found Zachary Parker deep in the opposite end. A minute later, it was 4-1 in the Ice Hawks favor.
Freedom’s Owen Barno scored to make it 4-2 in the second period, but Wiregrass scored again to lead 5-2 heading into the third.
The teams traded goals until penalties sent players from both teams into the penalty box. It would be counters to the teams’ power plays that would push the last bit of scoring through, with Freedom’s leading scorer Colton Sipperley cutting the lead to 6-4, followed by Wiregrass getting another goal by Davis with 1:05 remaining.
Final score: 7-4, Wiregrass.
“These are life lessons,” Spataro said. “You work with what you have to be successful in life and they did that. We’re proud of ourselves, we rose above it to play to our full potential.”
Spataro was particularly proud of the way his team held on in the close 4-2 pool play loss to Mitchell, the defending state and national champions. The Mustangs, who beat Wiregrass to win the Lightning Cup (the championship for the Tampa Bay Lightning High School League, or TBLHSL), beat the Ice Hawks again 5-0 to win the SAHOF Tier 2 title.
“That was a hell of a team to compete against,” Spataro said of Mitchell.
North Broward Preparatory won the Tier 1 championship. It was the fourth consecutive year the Coconut Creek-based school captured the Tier 1 title.
For Freedom, its run to the state championships capped a solid season that included a 14-5-3 record in the TBLHSL, good for third-place in the Andreychuk Division, behind Jesuit and Wiregrass, which both finished 16-6.
Sophomore Colton Sipperly and senior Hunter Sipperly, both forwards, led the Patriots in goals, with 25 and 23, respectively, during the regular season. Hunter scored six in a 12-3 win over River Ridge and Cotton netted five goals in a 6-3 win over Newsome last November.
Cotton added 24 assists for a team-high 49 points, while senior defenseman Brian Seybold was second with 33 points on 18 goals and 15 assists. Forward Tyler Young, another senior, scored 13 goals with 17 assists.
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