The Upper Montgomery Lightning began the recent 2026 spring hockey season with a win and a tie. While those were impressive results, the program is not concerned with the outcome of any spring hockey game. More important for the coaches is how the students are playing the team’s systems and their compete level. The coaching staff provided each student athlete with a list of three primary skills to improve upon before the fall 2026 – 2027 hockey season. The spring league games are a wonderful opportunity for the students to practice those skills in a live game environment.
The program also welcomed six new student athletes to the team: goalie Cooper Sullivan, defender Owen Hinchliffe, and forwards Kyle Zheng, Cameron Newton, Parker Zimmerman, and Aditya Samarth. Over the next four seasons, these students will grow and develop. All six will immediately fight for playing time on the Lightning junior varsity next season, and a few of the newcomers may see some occasional playing time with the varsity.
Two returning students have improved throughout the spring season. Both defender Dylan Kim and forward Nolan Veillette have worked hard to get better. They have followed the coaching instructions provided and translated the feedback into action. Their improvement should be noticeable next season during the junior varsity game competitions. After the spring season, the next time the Lightning are on the ice is in September after Labor Day, so it will be up to all the students to put in the effort during the off season to improve their game.
#Skills Development, #UML, #Bleed Green, #Go Bolts!