After a three week break, the Upper Montgomery Lightning junior varsity will face off against non-conference foe Harford County (HarCo) on Monday afternoon in a pre-holiday matinee. The away game is in Abington, Maryland, at Ice World with puck drop scheduled for 4:40 pm. HarCo enters the game with a 0-3 record. With Upper Montgomery sitting at 1-4, it should be a competitive game.
Upper Montgomery scored four goals on Halloween afternoon against the combined Northwest / Quince Orchard / Wootton squad, coming back three separate times to cut the deficit to one goal. Outside of this last game and the victory over the DC Stars, the Lightning junior varsity had only scored four goals for the season. HarCo has the same issues scoring. They have deposited just five goals over their three games on the season. With each team hard pressed to score, one would anticipate the game to be relatively low scoring.
Both teams will have decisions in net as each squad has three junior varsity eligible goalies. It is anticipated that both teams may split the game in net. Upper Montgomery will likely start one of its ninth grade goalies in either Stephen Rickman or George Schickler. Depending upon the flow of the game, and which goalie is chosen to start, the Lightning coaching staff may play sophomore 16U Lower A Porter Stutsrim-Lyons in the back half of the game. Both Rickman and Schickler have seen multiple games of action this fall as Upper Montgomery is loaning both netminders to Walter Johnson High School. The Wildcats do not have a junior varsity eligible goalie on their roster. HarCo has a similar interesting dilemma. They have three junior varsity goalies and have been splitting time in each of their first three games of the season. Ninth grader Jackson Scalli has the best numbers of the three as he has a 1.96 goals against average and a .963 goals against average. Ninth grade goalies Brody Szyjka and Jacob McBee have far less successful statistics.
On defense Monday afternoon, the Lightning will piece it together with who is available to play. Anticipate that both ninth grade defenders, Dylan Kim and Lenny Roth will get plenty of playing time. This may be another game where Upper Montgomery captain Jason Woodman drops back to play some on defense. 16U Lower A defender Matt Rivera has scored on end to end rushes in three games this season. He has worked to make himself an offensive threat. He is tied for second on the team with three goals in five games. Junior Max Curtusan will round out the defensive alignment. His size and toughness around the net should help out against the HarCo forwards. The young defenders getting to play significant minutes against HarCo will be a good barometer of how much they have improved since the off-ice preseason practices began in August.
For HarCo their defensive will be up in the air as well. With games played during Thanksgiving week, and this being a non-conference game, coaching staffs sometimes give additional ice time to students that do not play as much. HarCo has received one goal from a defender all season, ninth grade defender Patrick Hafner. The only other scoring from HarCo’s defense is an assist from ninth grade defender Nathaniel Meissner.
Coming into the season the Upper Montgomery coaching staff knew that offense was going to be a continuing struggle all season long for the Lightning’s junior varsity. Some unexpected scoring has emerged from junior forward Mason Jagoz (5GP, 4G, 1A) including a hat-trick against the DC Stars. Ninth grade forward Tima Zamaray leads the junior varsity in scoring with (5GP, 3G, 3A). Senior team captain Jason Woodman has (5GP, 3A). Sophomore 16U Upper A Max Israfilbek has (4GP, 2G). Upper Montgomery’s goals per game have slowly increased to an average of three goals per game. The team’s overall focus on defense first hockey was to lighten the need to keep pace offensively and score toe to toe with the top teams in the conference. HarCo has one student with more than one point on the season, forward Henry Monks with two goals in two games.
As has been mentioned over and over, the 2025 – 2026 season will be one where the coaching staff is focused on individual student growth and development. With eight incoming junior varsity students, the program is looking for all eight of these students to contribute to the program over the next four seasons. The playing time received this season should help each student become better in the years to come when Upper Montgomery is likely to be better positioned to again challenge for the junior varsity championship.
As part of this development, the program has scheduled two non-conference games to provide the junior varsity students with additional game action to continue to develop their skills. How quickly the team develops the necessary defensive habits and rough and tough physical identity will determine how soon the Lightning can threaten the top junior varsity teams in Montgomery County. This season, the team may simply be too young and inexperienced to compete on the defensive end of the ice. The hope is that by the end of the year no program wants to be matched up against the Lightning in the opening round of the junior varsity playoff tournament.
#UML, #Back to Winning, #Bleed Green, #Go Bolts!