Greater Johnstown High School’s hockey team has found a link to the program’s successful past while celebrating the Trojans’ 25th anniversary season.
Coach Steve Barto’s team won its first six games and will take a 6-1 record into next Thursday’s key PIHL Open Division game against visiting Ford City.
“We’re pretty proud of this,” Barto said of the milestone season. “We’re the longest-running program going in the area. The fact that it happened to be our 25th year and we got out to a 6-1 start, we’re hopeful we can continue to have a great year and make a run at the Open Cup.”
Johnstown has used a stingy defense, excellent goaltending and balanced scoring to start strong. Trojans goaltender David Dunkleberger has six wins, with four shutouts and a 1.45 goals against average.
“Dunkleberger is leading the league in goals against average,” Barto said. “He’s having an outstanding season. We start out by playing defense first and scoring second. We clear our own end. We don’t score many goals, but we don’t give up many.”
Derek Grove has a team-best eight goals and 14 points. Daniel Smith and Tess Weaver each have eight points, with Smith scoring seven goals. Travis Weaver has seven points.
“We’ve got a good core group of eight seniors that have come up through the program,” Barto said. “They learned the system back in ninth grade when myself and my staff came on. They’re maturing at the right time.”
The Trojans program appears to be back on track after several lean seasons.
Johnstown has a strong scholastic hockey tradition.
Former Trojans coach Vern Campigotto played for the Johnstown Jets before helping to found the Johnstown High squad.
“It wasn’t much when it started out,” Campigotto said of the program. “We got some good players as they came along like the (Scott) Hershbergers, the (Brian) Wincers, John Shanders and Jeff Bushes. I’ll never forget (former team manager) John Jedrzejek called me and told me the babies (young players) were coming (back in 1983). The program worked out. It was five, six, or seven years after I started coaching that we got all the kids.”
Those “kids” won the Class AA Penguin Cup and advanced to the Pennsylvania Cup championship game in 1990 and 1992. Both times the Trojans finished as state runner-up while competing against significantly bigger programs.
“My feeling was that we played some big schools out of Philadelphia,” Campigotto said. “They played their so-called Flyer Cup. It was mostly Triple-A schools. Whoever lost the Flyers Cup played the Double-A state championship game. I’ll never forget Council Rock, they were the Triple-A champions the year before and they dropped down to Double-A (in 1992). It was never uniform.”
In 1990, the Trojans overcame a 5-1 deficit with less than eight minutes left in the game to tie Father Judge in the state championship at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena – now known as Mellon Arena. But with four seconds left, Father Judge netted a rebound goal to win 6-5.
Wincer had a hat trick and Brian Bunn had two goals in the comeback.
In 1992, Council Rock goaltender Scott Prosek had a 29-save shutout in a 4-0 win over Johnstown in the state championship game, once again at the Civic Arena.
Barto said the current Trojans will have an opportunity to bond with the past players.
“At the end of the year we plan to do a present team versus alumni game,” he said. “The year-end banquet will be open to alumni.”
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AAABA League Preview
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