Girls' goalie glut makes Bloomington Jefferson get defensive

Last season's merger of the Bloomington Jefferson and Bloomington Kennedy girls' hockey programs has resulted in an unusual quandary for coach Mark Stephan: Too many goalies.

The team went 16-9-1 while rotating three goalies — one from Kennedy, two from Jefferson — last year. All graduated, leaving the Jaguars with four potential goalies, none of whom had any varsity experience and all of whom are underclassmen.

So, in the interest of fairness, Stephan decided to make the competition for the position an open race.

"I've got a 10th-grader, two ninth-graders and an eighth-grader," he said. "I didn't think we were in a postion to take kids that young and say, 'You're the No. 1 goalie.' I said, 'I'm going to let you guys figure it out.' "

Now 10 games into the season, the Jaguars are 5-5 and the competition has yet to be decided. All four goalies — sophomore Brier Hagen, freshmen Emma Bonney and Hailey Stone and eighth-grader Mara McClain — have started at least two games and won at least one.

"No one has been great," Stephan said.

The glut of goalies has created a positive by-product, he said. Knowing their goalies are still unproven, the rest of the Jaguars have made a conscious effort to improve defensively. That paid dividends when they upset high-scoring Hopkins 4-3 on Saturday.

Stephan knows he's going to have to decide whom to keep and whom to move to JV. But for now, that decision is far from imminent.

"I had a meeting with all four of them and told them this wasn't the best format for the team," he said. "Going forward, I'd like two varsity goalies and two JV goalies. But the next day, they all went out and laid an egg. I don't want to put too much pressure on young people. We want them to have the opportunity."

•Bloomington Jefferson senior running back Colton Myles was selected as the standout senior at Sunday's Northstar Football Report Winter Combine. Myles had the best time (6.76 seconds) in the three-cone drill, ran a 4.63 40-yard dash, had a vertical jump of 32 inches, a broad jump of 9 feet, 11 inches and had the second-best time in the pro-style shuttle agility drill.

•DeLaSalle's Drayton Carlberg has been selected as a defensive lineman for the 2015 U.S. Under-19 National Team in football. The team will play Team Canada on Feb. 7 at the University of Texas at Arlington. The 6-5, 283-pound Carlberg committed to Oregon in November.