Puckish Youth : Midwinter Night’s Dream: Junior Hockey Championship

The clock was bearing down on midnight on a Friday, girlfriends had already said their early good nights, and the dedicated 19-and-under South Coast Sabers were on the ice at Glacial Garden Ice Arena.

“We’re used to practicing at like, 12. We’ve practiced at 4 in the morning,” said Justin White, 19, who wears the captain’s “C” on his sweater.

The NHL is coming to Anaheim this fall, but for now, this is Anaheim’s most distinguished hockey team. The players are a lot older than the “Mighty Ducks” in the movie--and a lot closer to a championship than the expansion team that will play at Anaheim Arena next season.

This week in Salt Lake City, the Sabers will be trying to win the national junior title. They qualified for the eight-team tournament by beating four other teams for the Pacific division title recently in Seattle. Now they get a return trip to the nationals, where they finished second last year to a team from Marquette, Mich., a far more traditional hockey territory than the communities where these California players grew up.

“(The other teams) thought of it as a joke last year,” said Eric Kizanis, 18, who along with White is one of the team’s leading goal-scorers. “Before and after, it was, “All you guys know how to do is surf.’ ”

They skate pretty well, too. Kizanis says his father put him on skates when he was 3. White was 4, when his father, Ron, a native Californian, stepped onto the ice for the first time.

“My 4-year-old was on one end and I was on the other, about to split my head open,” Ron White said. Fifteen years later, Ron is an experienced coach and the managing director of the Glacial Garden arena.

Youth hockey has enjoyed increased popularity in Southern California since Wayne Gretzky came to the Kings in 1988. Ice hockey has also benefited from the number of kids playing street hockey on in-line skates in recent years.

But the core of this team, which used to play out of Ice Capades Chalet in Costa Mesa before the Glacial Garden rink was finished in November, has been together for years, since some of them were in elementary school. A few have since gone away to college. White is a student at UC Santa Barbara, and defenseman Matt Gouvion, who has quite a good hockey name for a Corona del Mar High School graduate, comes home all the way from Arizona State. Many others are in school locally and have jobs. But their enjoyment of the game keeps them coming back to the rink at whatever odd hour they can get the ice to themselves.

The tight-knit group has had some heady experiences over the years. When they were playing in a younger division a few years back, the team went to Quebec City for a tournament, and played in Le Colisee, home of the Nordiques. One of the Southern California players, Brent Bisogno, gave interviews using his high school French.

The players have also watched one of their own struggle to recover from a high school wrestling accident in 1990 that could have robbed him of his ability to walk.

Steve Coniglio, 20, of Santa Ana, was one of the team’s better players before breaking his neck in a wrestling accident. But he overcame doctors’ predictions, and not only walks but is able to skate a little even though the left side of his body is still weak. He isn’t able to play any more, but he recently showed up at a practice in the wee hours to support his old teammates.

The team’s coach, Ron White, thinks the Sabers’ chances this year are good this year. Last year’s team only had 12 skaters at nationals because some players who were trying to secure baseball scholarships stayed home for high school games. With the semifinals and finals on the same day, the Sabers’ bench was too short. This year, he’ll have 17 skaters.

“We did well last year,” he said. “We didn’t win, simply because we ran out of gas.”

They don’t plan on running out of gas this year. Many of the top players are getting too old to play in the junior division, so the team is running out of chances.

Still, there are other players on the way. The youngest member of the team is Erik Brown, 16, a Trabuco Hills High School student whose father is from Canada. Brown, whose earnest young face reminds you of some of the NHL’s new European stars, is so serious about the game that he spent the fall semester living in Toronto and playing with young Canadians. He plans to finish high school here, then go back East to play in college. His classmates are fascinated with his devotion to the game. His girlfriend, he says, is a bit less enthusiastic.

“I’m dedicated, I don’t mind,” he said. “I love to play.”