Coronado High School Club Hockey Team Ices Competition

The Coronado High ice hockey team won its first two games in the New Mexico Interscholastic Ice Hockey tournament Saturday. Goaltenders Dominic Cavazos and Kelsi Byrd starred, allowing just one goal between them in an 8-0 victory over Santa Fe and a 2-1 win over Albuquerque Eldorado.

Coronado has El Paso’s only high school hockey team. The T-Birds play in a league with 10 New Mexico schools, including many from the Albuquerque area, and others as far away as Los Alamos, Cibola and Taos. The championship tournament is divided into two brackets. A four-team “pure” bracket features teams in which all players attend the school they play for. Coronado is in a seven-team “composite” bracket, for schools that complete their rosters with players from schools that don’t have hockey teams.

The first weekend of the double elimination tournament is being conducted at the Taos Youth and Family Center, in Taos, N.M. The rink is covered, but one end is open to the elements. The temperature was 12 degrees when the puck dropped at 8:30 a.m. for the first game of the morning.

Coronado raced out to a 3-0 lead in the first period against Santa Fe High, then put on a defensive show in the scoreless second period. The T-Birds killed overlapping penalties, including a 1:12 stretch when they only had three skaters on the ice to the Blue Jackets’ five.

The offense took center stage again in the third period, as the T- Birds reeled off five more unanswered goals for the 8-0 victory.

Several members of the team didn’t reach Taos until after midnight and had to be ready for the team’s 7:30 a.m. team meeting at the rink. Then, the trade-off for playing as late as possible in the final opening round game meant just an hour off between games before playing Eldorado, which had all night to rest after beating Rio Rancho Friday night to advance. Eldorado had beaten Coronado twice during the regular season.

The T-Birds promptly opened up a 2-0 lead over the Eagles in the first period. The game was notable for its intensity. The T-Birds had to kill three separate penalties in the opening period. Then, after Eldorado had closed the gap to 2-1 in the third period, a fight broke out after Coronado’s star senior Marty Madden was kneed in the face by an Eldorado player. Madden received a 10 minute game misconduct penalty, effectively ending his high school career. The league punishes fighting with a five-game suspension, and no combination of wins or losses will give Coronado five more games during the tournament.

The Eldorado player was also ejected, and he threw his stick as he left the ice, resulting in an additional game misconduct. After changing into his street clothes, the player left the locker room he had been sent to and had to be restrained by other bystanders as he yelled profanities. He was then ordered to leave the arena. The 10 to 15 minute delay didn’t faze the T-Birds, who played stout defense and preserved the 2-1 win.

Next up for Coronado is the undefeated top-seeded Cibola Cougars. The puck drops for that game at 7 a.m. Sunday. All teams that have not suffered two losses will advance to the final rounds to played in Albuquerque next weekend.