Sports

QO Combines With 3 Schools to Form Unique Hockey Team

Quince Orchard, Poolesville, Northwest, and Seneca Valley high schools combine to form the Northwest Hockey Club, a co-op team in the Maryland Scholastic Hockey League.

In most sports, they are considered rivals, but for the athletes who play hockey the sport transcends grudge matches as players without high school teams band together to form their own.

Every Tuesday evening, senior Reed Kaczmarek gathers his hockey equipment and travels north on I-270 to Frederick. Unlike many other Montgomery County high school sports athletes, he must drive 45 minutes to practice.

Somehow, this is not the oddest part of the arrangement.

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Kaczmarek is the captain of the Northwest Hockey Club, a team combining students from Quince Orchard, Poolesville, Northwest, and Seneca Valley high schools to compete in the Maryland Scholastic Hockey League’s co-op division.

What the MSHL used to consider provisional teams – clubs that would form by pulling players from schools without a hockey program and work towards being a pure, single school team within three years, team manager Jeff Yarmas said – has evolved into the co-op division.

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The Northwest Hockey club, recognized by the league as Poolesville-QO, participates in the Montgomery Hockey Conference’s co-op division against similar programs.

The team’s captain said he recognizes the stark contrast between his high school hockey program and his other sport, Quince Orchard lacrosse.

“Playing lacrosse at QO, you know everyone. So you get on the field and you play with everyone, you’re friends with everyone,” Kaczmarek said. “Then you come here and there’s 20 kids in the locker room you’ve never seen before. It takes a while to get to know everyone.

In its second year featuring the four schools in the MCPS Northwest Quad Cluster, 11 players are brand new to the program, Head Coach Arthur Slade said.

“I think my first concern when I took over this team three years ago was [kids from] four schools that are in the same county but not necessarily know one another,” Slade said. “How are they going to gel? Are their school rivalries within the team?”

Luckily there have been no such issues, Slade said, but cohesion is a concern on a yearly basis.

What the coach hopes helps that issue is a fun and fair environment he creates for the team.

“Any person [from QO, Poolesville, Northwest, or Seneca Valley] that would like to play hockey can come out,” Slade said. “We take everyone, everyone plays regardless of skill.”

Among those players is a special needs student from QO, who Slade said “is very excited to play with us.”

“It’s a learning experience for our players because [he] is not up to the same speed, but we all think [he’s] is a great addition,” Slade said. “It’s a great way for us to build and learn team cohesion. In other ways, it helps our players realize that they have to help others, not just themselves when it comes to playing hockey.”

Although the team is unlikely to qualify for a playoff berth this season, the MSHL does hold a post-season tournament to crown a co-op division champion, Slade said.

And while that’s disappointing to Kaczmarek and the rest of the players, the captain said they make a unique situation work for one reason.

“We’re all here to play hockey and have fun,” he said. “We’re with kids from different schools but we’re all having fun playing hockey and doing what we love to do.”

The Northwest Hockey Club takes on Blake at 8:50 p.m. at Rockville Ice Arena in the North Potomac-Darnestown Patch Game of the Week.


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