You walk towards the steel doors of the gym. Trophy cases displaying various different athletic trophies and memorabilia on either side of the door ways, inviting you into tradition and history. You step foot onto the freshly glossed gym floor to be greeted by a flash of bright light and sets of various different basketball hoops. Beyond those basketball hoops lie an abundance of different orange, black, and white banners showing off different athletic accolades. They wrap proudly around all the gym walls and are very hard to miss with big bold letters and numbers made to grab anyone who sets foot in the gym’s attention. But directly on the back wall are the accolades that are hard to achieve. State Championships. A team who has gotten to win a state championship has had to compete at a high level to become the best of the best. But the question is, what goes into becoming a state champion?

This time around I contacted Coach Larry of our school’s hockey program regarding the 2011 co-op state championship.

Coach Larry Camus played on Holyoke’s division 1 Western Mass Hockey Championship team and graduated from Holyoke High School in 1979. Afterwards, he began his coaching career as an assistant coach during the 1999-2000 season for Holyoke High School. Now Coach Larry is the head coach of SHHS’s hockey team and has been since 2017. He hopes to continue coaching for future seasons.

“What do you think was the main reason why your team was so successful?”

“After winning our 1st state title in 2009 and a heartbreaking loss in 2010, we found ourselves back in the Championship game in 2011. We went from underdogs in 09′ and became favorites in 10′,11′ because of the vast array of talent and the depth of our bench. Plus having played in 2 Finals before 2011 gave us the experience that the other team didn’t have. In 2012 we played in the state final as the South Hadley Tigers for the 1st time as the host school and suffered another devastating loss.”

“What was team comradery like?”

“The team consisted of players from 3 schools, Holyoke was the host school that year and it was also the last year that Holyoke was the host, with South Hadley/Granby. The camaraderie within the team despite being a co-op was high as most of the players grew up playing with each other in the youth leagues. There were team dinners at the players’ houses that kept everyone together all season.”

“What were your team’s biggest struggles that year and how did you overcome it?”

“The biggest struggle that we had that year was finding playing time for all the talented players and trying to get the younger players the needed ice time to develop them for the upcoming seasons. We did overcome it by sitting some of the better players in order to give the younger players ice time, but at the expense of some personal achievements. ie; player missing out on a 100 point career with 99pts.”

“Any pre game rituals that you thought could have helped you?”

“Most of the players tend to have their own pre game rituals, which we allowed. Usually 10-15 minutes before the game was for us coaches to go over the plan for that game. Which included opposing players, how the referees usually called the game and the lineup. I don’t think that anything else would have helped us.”

“Did you ever doubt your team’s ability?”

“Myself and the rest of the coaches never doubted their ability, sometimes we would have to give them a pep talk to get them refocused after a poorly played game, but we knew we had one of the best teams in the state in our division.”

Following that 2011 season, due to lack of hockey players at Holyoke High (compared to SHHS,) SHHS became the host school for the hockey program. The team consisted of players from Holyoke, South Hadley, and Granby that originally sported Holyoke High’s purple. Swapped the purple for a more fitting orange, black, and white. Holyoke High was no longer the school that held a hockey program. Instead it moved just across the bridge.

Some would be sceptical about the move. But, the big question at the time was “How successful would this “new” team be?” Well… the answer to that question? Very Successful.

In 2017, SHHS’s Hockey team were WesternMass Champions. Showing that South Hadley High School might be the title town.