Chartiers Valley hockey battles to the end after sluggish start to season

By: Don Rebel
Sunday, February 19, 2023 | 11:01 AM

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Inexperience and youth made this a tough season at times for the Chartiers Valley hockey program, but the Colts have shown a strong finishing kick to the regular season even though they fell short of qualifying for the PIHL Penguins Cup playoffs.

“There’s an old expression that hard work beats talent that doesn’t work hard,” Chartiers Valley coach Paul Bonetti said. “I am a firm believer in this. Our motto is ‘Gritty, Not Pretty,’ so we want to be tough to play against every game, and most nights we are. This season was always going to be difficult with how inexperienced we are, but things are trending up for us because of the hard work that our players put in at practice and during games.”

Because the Colts were regularly playing seven freshman and six players who were not part of the varsity team a year ago, it was rough sailing for CV at the start of the season.

Chartiers Valley was 1-8 before the first day of winter.

“Obviously we are never satisfied with losing any games, let alone several in a row,” Bonetti said. “While it took our team more time than I would have liked to get up to speed and adjust to participating at the varsity level, the improvement they’ve made has been nothing short of remarkable. That is a credit to the players who have kept grinding, but we’ve also been blessed with a tremendous supporting staff, including Mike Kennedy and Tony Franzetta. These guys both have head coaching experience in the league and we all work together to push the team forward. The work ethic on our staff is supreme.”

The hard work behind the scenes started to pay off with winning hockey. Since the start of 2023, the Colts are 4-3 with a pair of one goal losses.

“We only had two games in December so we scheduled a scrimmage game against a very good private school in early December,” Bonetti said. “Prior to that game, we made some significant adjustments to our overall structure and won, 1-0. Our next game was against Erie McDowell, a team that had beaten us in embarrassing fashion by nine goals only a few weeks before, and while we still lost, we cut that deficit to two goals. That is when we knew that the changes we made to our style of play were working.”

One of Chartiers Valley’s four wins since the holidays came against first-place North Hills. The Colts won 3-2 on Jan. 30, handing the Indians one of only two losses they’ve suffered all season.

“Our kids were really happy to beat North Hills, who might be the best team in our classification and had been previously unbeaten in regulation,” Bonetti said. “Generally, the highlights have come from watching our players improve and become more complete hockey players. It is a proud moment as a coach when you see it click. The buy-in from our boys has been incredible.”

One of those players who has bought in is the team’s leading scorer, Brady Nairn, who is the only Colts player with double-digit goals and assists.

“Brady Nairn is one of the best players in the PIHL as a sophomore,” Bonetti said. “When he is on top of his game, there aren’t many teams who can stop him. Anybody observing him can see he’s got great talent, but he is also unselfish, our best defensive forward, and works as hard as anybody on the team.

“On defense, Luke Hinds was selected as an all-star and is a solid defenseman who makes smart decisions with the puck. Between him and Sean Taylor, they give us a good veteran presence on the blue line. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Matthew Colberg, who has been great for us in goal this year and is also just a sophomore.”

This season, the PIHL expanded Class A to 23 teams. There are 12 teams in the Gold Division, including Chartiers Valley. Bonetti would love to see a format change with classes set up more by enrollment before another season starts in October.

“I would like to see the league return to a more balanced system of classification. Simply put, there are too many teams in our classification which is not only unwieldy, but also creates too many non-competitive games. There are schools with massive enrollment advantages, who along with private schools who have no boundaries at all, shouldn’t be placed in Class A.

“While the league has typically done a good job and utilized a competitive formula in the past, I’m not sure what happened this year. Regardless, we will play whatever schedule is put in front of us and continue working towards our goal to win a state championship.”

With the Colts relying so heavily on younger players this season, talk of a state championship in the near future isn’t out of the question.

“We only graduate three seniors and our young players have gotten a lot of experience this year,” Bonetti said. “If all of our existing players can remain mentally strong, stay the course and come back next season, we have potential to be a great team beginning next year and moving into the future.

“We are only two years removed from participating in the Penguins Cup, and missing out on going to the state championship game by as single goal. We have had to reload, and now there is no reason we can’t get over that hump within the next one to two years.”

Tags: Chartiers Valley