With the high school hockey team coming online this spring, is Sardis starting down a path that would eventually see them going toe-to-toe with the Yale Hockey Academy?
The Lions are one of the premier programs in Canada, churning out junior A/major junior level talent each year.
Sardis is a long, long way from reaching those heights, and the Falcons won’t play Yale’s top teams in head-to-head action, but Jeff Grenier believes the package Sardis offers is already comparable to Yale and he sees the program evolving.
“We’re not going to have any shortage of talented coaches and instructors, we bring in sports psychologists and offer SAT prep and I believe we provide a good opportunity for kids to stay here and better their game,” he said. “A young player can get a lot of development and now they can get game experience as well.”
Grenier started two years ago with 14 players.
He’s got 25 now and looks forward to the possibility of the school going Grade 9-12 within the next two years.
“That’ll provide the opportunity to go with a junior varsity/varsity kind of thing where the Grade 9-10 students have one team and the Grade 11-12 kids have another,” he said. “It is our immediate goal to keep local talent here and be able to offer two options for hockey academy students, a high performance stream and one for recreational players.
See sardissecondary.ca/sports-academies for info on the hockey offerings.
