Patriots ready for Frozen Four

The Patri­ots cel­e­brate after win­ning the Colum­bus Dis­trict title.

Olen­tangy Lib­erty has one heck of a hockey fam­ily. That’s right, family.

The Patri­ots are a team, sure, but play more like a band of broth­ers, a trait that’s car­ried them all the way to their sport’s biggest stage — the OHSAA state final four.

“This group isn’t only a team, but a group of friends,” defense­man and cap­tain Anthony Bergamesca, who has an actual sib­ling, younger brother Christo­pher, on the squad with him said. “We have accom­plished every­thing on our check list so far … just one check to go, and that’s the state title.”

Fel­low defense­man Keaton All­maras, who also has a younger brother, Noah, con­tribut­ing to the team’s suc­cess, said the bond between play­ers is the Patri­ots’ biggest strength.

“We play well as a team and have great chem­istry,” he said. “We’ve had lots of injuries this year, but we’ve had other play­ers step up and take over. We don’t have any big egos, we just play together … we have great friend­ships on and off the ice and we respect each other.”

The squad’s already achieved what’s been tabbed the hat trick of Colum­bus Dis­trict hockey, win­ning the Cap­i­tal Hockey Con­fer­ence Cham­pi­onship, the Colum­bus Blue Jack­ets Cup title and a dis­trict title thanks to last weekend’s thrilling 3–2 win over top-seeded Dublin Jerome in dou­ble over­time, aveng­ing two ear­lier losses to the Celtics in the process. No CHC team had ever pulled off the tri­fecta until Lib­erty pulled it off this winter.

The Patri­ots have prac­ti­cally a lifetime’s worth of wins and superla­tives to their credit this sea­son alone. With an over­all mark off 27–8-1 head­ing into this weekend’s Frozen Four, four Patri­ots (goalie Eddie Arcy, for­ward Jimmy Ruska and the Bergamesca broth­ers) have already been awarded first-team All-League hon­ors, one (defense­man Alec Vidrick) earned second-team All-League recog­ni­tion and another (for­ward Ethan Hollingsworth) was an hon­or­able men­tion All-League contributor.

But to bring the ulti­mate prize back to Pow­ell, Lib­erty has to col­lect two more wins, start­ing with Saturday’s state semi­fi­nal against Toledo St. Fran­cis DeSales, the top seed out of the Syl­va­nia District.

As impres­sive as Liberty’s been this year, St. Fran­cis DeSales (32–4-1) has been just as good, drop­ping Toledo Whit­mer 10–2 in a dis­trict quar­ter­fi­nal and knock­ing off Find­lay 6–3 in the semi­fi­nal before tak­ing care of Toledo St. John’s Jesuit 7–4 in its dis­trict title tilt.

“St. Fran­cis has three solid offen­sive lines and our defense will need to con­tinue play­ing at the level we have been,” Anthony Bergamesca said. “We have been doing our home­work and we can def­i­nitely win if we stick to Lib­erty hockey. We need to play smart, play as a team and face adver­sity pos­i­tively. We need to be prepared.”

“St. Fran­cis obvi­ously has a great team,” Keaton All­maras said. “They will be the best team we’ve played all year. To come out on top we will need to play our game, not theirs; we will need to keep the mis­takes to a min­i­mum as they are the type of team that will capitalize.”

The puck drops at noon Sat­ur­day at Nation­wide Arena.

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 10 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.