TISDALE — The Tisdale Trojans have a lot of work to do this season.
The first steps of that work kicked off over the weekend as the Trojans welcomed 52 players to their fall training camp.
The two-day camp featured three teams and three practices, with some intersquad games on Saturday.
Teams were then cut to two before practices and scrimmages resumed on Sunday.
After a “really good” weekend, Trojans head coach Darrell Mann said the club elected to keep close to 40 players for their exhibition schedule, added they wanted to get a bunch of our young guys in as well.
While the Trojans were getting set for another season of Midget AAA action, it will not be a normal season for the Tisdale club, as they are set to host the Telus Cup regional qualifier in the spring.
Knowing the club has already guaranteed themselves a berth in the Telus Cup regional tournament, Mann said the club took a different approach to constructing the roster for this season, noting they have elected to carry just two 15-year-olds, one season after carrying nine.
“We wanted to be a little older, a little stronger and a lot more emphasis on this year rather than making sure things are going to be okay in a year down the time so we’re obviously going to have to do a lot of recruiting for the team in 2019-20,” he said.
“But it’s pretty unique when you have a chance to be one win away from going to a national championship. You want to make sure you put your best team forward and we really think we’ve done that by adding some older players. We’ve got some 17-year-old rookies that look really good on our hockey club and we think that’s going to give us a little bit of an advantage going forward.”
Of course, with players knowing they already have a spot locked up, Mann said it will be important for the coaching staff and players to remain focused on the entire season and try to earn their way into the league and provincial championship.
“As coaches that’s our job to make sure we’re prepared every night and make sure we’re focused on winning the league first and then getting the opportunity to play at regionals.”
With the players and Mann knowing heading into camp that the club had a lot of work to do heading into an important year, the 16 year coach of the Trojans said he was surprised and impressed with what he saw on the ice.
“The biggest thing that we were excited about is we knew we had a really good nucleus of 11 veterans coming back but our new guys that we had signed had pushed the pace so much that they made our veterans have to step up their game,” he said.
“We’re really excited with the players that we added over the course of the last couple months and we really think with our veterans and our new guys that we really have a really exciting hockey team for this season.”
