All-Missota Conference
(photos by Jim Lindquist)
For the first time since 2006, the Tiger boys finished on the plus side of the .500 mark. Farmington closed the 2010-11 campaign with a 14-13 record and its 7-7 mark in the Missota Conference earned a third place tie with Red Wing in the final standings.
"We had a good group of senior leaders," coach Keith Revels said. "It was fun to see them mature as players and as people over the past couple of seasons.
"As a team we really came together to play our best hockey at the end of the season when it mattered the most."
Twenty-three players and three managers received varsity letters at the post-season banquet held Thursday night, Mar. 17, including a dozen seniors: Jake Sorenson, Trevor Hockert, Quinn Malcolm, Justin Rees, Zak Payne, Quinn Eden, Tyler Grubb, Matt Provost, Dan Handberg, Aaron Dahl, Charlie Wicks (manager) and Cooper Loew (manager).
Underclassmen monogram winners included juniors Jack Buss, Andrew Peterson, Michael Giebel, Jake Eldred, Ryan Schoening, Trevor Howard, Sean Johnson, Blake Weinand and Victor Simones; sophomores Grant Hauswirth, Kevin Olund, John Donnelly and Jason Thomas and freshman Marcus Dubois (manager).
Grubb, the team's leading scorer with 52 points on 27 goals and 25 assists, took home the team's Most Valuable Player award and joined Peterson (17 goals, 20 assists) on the all-Missota Conference team. Handberg (12 goals, 22 assists) and Payne (12 goals, 14 assists) received all-league honorable mention.
Weinand won the Mr. Hustle award and Rees was the recipient of the Hobey Baker award. Hauswirth won Rookie of the Year honors and Hockert was the team's "Most Improved" player.
Revels noted that this season's .500 run in the conference represented a vast improvement from last year's 2-12 league mark and his team's strong finish may have provided the season's brightest moments.
"With four games left we were 9-12 and were playing three teams that had beaten us earlier in the year," he said. "We won them all."
Revels also pointed with pride to a convincing win over Rochester John Marshall in the Section 1AA quarterfinals that avenged a lopsided regular season loss to the Rockets.
The win vaulted the Tigers into the semifinals where they lost to Lakeville South. It was the first time Farmington had advanced to the semifinals since being re-classified to Class AA more than a decade ago.
"We played a little tight against South and it looked a little like it was our first trip to the semis," Revels said, "but we never gave up and we played hard to the end."
Revels said the loss of a big senior class will be a challenge for next year's squad but he feels it will be up to the task.
"We'll have some big holes to fill," he said, "but we have a good corps coming back and some good young candidates who should be ready to step in and play.
"We're trying to get some summer ice at our arena and we'll need our players to start finding Scott Meier's weight room over the off-season."
