Belmont-Gilford hockey uses last year's loss as springboard to DIII title

To tell the story of the championship run of the 2023 Belmont-Gilford boys hockey team, who won the Division III title on Saturday night, coach Jason Parent had to wind the clock back to the last game of the 2021-22 season. Berlin-Gorham won last year’s championship, a perennial powerhouse in the division, and they won by defeating Belmont-Gilford.

It was a loss that stuck with the team, Parent said. A win would have been the second championship in the program’s history, the first coming in 2015.

“Last year, coming off the championship game, we set a lofty goal that we were going to make it back there. We were going to finish what we started,” Parent said.

The work started almost immediately. Strength training, cardiovascular conditioning and skills development such as stick handling, shooting and goaltending were all on the offseason menu for Belmont-Gilford players.

“I felt that the boys did a great job of doing what they needed to do to get back [to the finals],” Parent said. “They dedicate a lot more than just the winter season to hockey. You can’t learn everything you need to know at practice, you have to put some time in on your own.”

The coaching team had its own work to do. Parent added a couple of assistant coaches — Will Fay and John McKenzie — each bringing their own set of expertise. Together, the coaches worked on effecting a culture change on the team.

“We realized that in order to win a state championship, we had to compete as a team and not so much for ourselves,” Parent said. “I think some of the teams I’ve coached in the past might have been more individual thought process, rather than team thought process.”

Parent said his team had the best individual players in DIII, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they had the best team. The difference is found in the bond between those players. Faced with adversity, such as falling behind late in the game, or losing a key player to illness or injury, can cause a group of individuals to fold. If team members trust each other, and expect their teammates to step up, then they will, too — and the result is a team that gets tougher when the odds are stacked.

“A lot of it comes down to discipline,” Parent explained. The coaches hold players accountable — even the star players — and soon the players begin holding each other to a higher standard.

“Once you start the change, start that shift and get the buy-in, that’s where it’s at,” Parent said.

A little external reinforcement helps, and Belmont-Gilford got just that on Feb. 11, the fourth-to-last game of the regular season, when the team traveled to Hollis Brookline-Derryfield and lost 2-1, the only smudge on an otherwise undefeated season.

Parent’s coaching staff used it as a lesson to their players: They might have been the best team when the season started, but every other team was working to improve every day. If Belmont-Gilford wanted to end the season on the mountaintop, they couldn’t rest until they reached the summit.

Parent said the loss was a “defining moment ... It was a reset for our team. Our team was a little complacent in their actions, getting beat made them re-think what they were doing and what they needed to to get where they wanted to be.”

A startling loss, late in the regular season, was the wake-up call the team needed. With the top seed, Belmont-Gilford earned a bye into the semifinal round and a 5-0 win against the fifth-seeded Kingswood. Meanwhile, the reigning champions and second-seeded Berlin-Gorham had to fight off Sanborn-Epping (4-3) and Pembroke-Campbell (4-2) to earn the right to play in the title game.

It was a rematch of the 2022 championship game, and this time, the result went to Belmont-Gilford with a 4-1 final score.

The sparkling statistic of the night went to sophomore Evan Guerin, who scored three of the four goals, part of a season in which he notched 22 goals and 29 assists. But, Parent said, it was another Guerin who served as maestro of the win.

“Owen Guerin, who’s Evan’s older brother, he kind of controls the game,” Parent said. “He’s an amazing hockey player.” Owen, a senior who plays on the defensive line, controls both the tempo and the flow of play, Parent said, and he’s been doing that all season.

The Guerin boys — not the first example of brothers leading the way for Belmont-Gilford — compete intensely against one another during practice, which turned the heat up for everyone on the team, Parent said.

While Evan shone during the championship game, Owen actually led the team in points during the season, with 32 goals and 24 assists. Third on the stat sheet was sophomore Jaxson Embree, with 15 goals and six assists. Belmont-Gilford also had the best goaltender in the division, at least according to Parent, in the form of Carson McGreevy, who only allowed six goals in 10 games.

The talented McGreevy is just a sophomore, and an example of the youth powering the Belmont-Gilford machine. Parent said he’s only losing three seniors to graduation next year, and only one of those, Owen, was a starter in the championship game. There are already a couple of tall defenders, Nathan Gerbig and Aidan McKenzie, who are poised to step into a leadership role next year.

Parent said the team is “in good shape” to start the defense of the DIII title. But if last year is any lesson, they shouldn’t spend too much time celebrating the win. The teams they defeated are likely working already to stake their own claim to the mountaintop.

“We would like to thank all of our supporters,” Parent said. “We had a massive crowd down at the [championship] game, our fan base is growing on a yearly basis. It’s just amazing.”