New Faces Coming Aboard as SHSHL Prepares for New Season

Three new head coaches will be making their debuts when the Suburban High School Hockey League launches its 2024-25 season.

Bill Mooney will be behind the bench at Neshaminy, taking over for veteran Bill Keyser, Vince Forti has replaced Dave Cox at Plymouth Whitemarsh while Scott Ryon is now in charge at Souderton, following the footsteps of Ryan Uchniat.

A total of 15 teams will skate under the SHSHL umbrella during the 2024-25 season. The National Division will include defending Class AA Flyers Cup and state champion Pennridge and defending SHSHL National champion Council Rock South along with Central Bucks East, Central Bucks South, Central Bucks West, Council Rock North, Neshaminy, North Penn, Pennsbury, and Souderton.

The American Division will include Hatboro-Horsham, which will play a full league schedule this season, along with Abington, Plymouth Whitemarsh, Springfield, and Wissahickon. Bensalem, which won the division title a year ago, will not field a team this season.

The new season will kick off on Wednesday, October 30 with a four-game card. Pennridge will take on Pennsbury in a 7:20 start at Grundy Arena while Hatfield will host Central Bucks East against North Penn (7:20), Abington against Wissahickon (8:30), and Central Bucks West against Central Bucks South (9:00).

Steve Mackell Takes the Reins at APAC

A new era is dawning in the Atlantic Prep Athletic Conference this season. Steve Mackell, a longtime coach and administrator, is beginning his first season as the APAC’s commissioner.
He replaces Jim Britt, who served as the commissioner in the conference’s first six years of existence.

Mackell played high-school hockey at Cardinal O’Hara and junior hockey with the Quakers before playing for a year at West Chester State.

He began his coaching career alongside Jim McCrossin at Malvern Prep and later served as the Friars’ head coach. He also spent time behind the bench with the Quakers and Junior Flyers before joining Atlantic District player development staff.

“I’ve admired what the APAC mission was about”, Mackell said, “I know the schools, I know a lot of the coaches and the administrators from those schools and was really excited to be offered this opportunity.”

Mackell noted the unique stature that hockey is afforded at the five APAC member schools, Holy Ghost Prep, La Salle, Malvern Prep, St. oseph’s Prep, and Hun School.

“I think the common thread is hockey is recognized as a varsity sport in each of the schools,” he said. It’s run by the administration through the athletic director as well as the coaches.

“To be a varsity sport and have the backing of the school I think is paramount to being successful.”

Mackell points out the APAC’s success on the ice is coupled with a commitment to academic excellence.

“What the APAC has done in the [six] years they’ve been in existence is create a very competitive environment,” he said. “All those schools are academically challenging and I think they draw a lot of the same type student-athletes into the sport. They’ve been able to create a very high level of competitiveness through their individual scheduling at the schools as well as through the APAC scheduling.”

Since the APAC made it’ debut for the 2018-19 season, conference schools have won six consecutive Class AAA Flyers Cups. All told, they’ve won 24, including the last 13 in succession.

Heickert Approaching Arcadia Debut

The Arcadia University men’s hockey program has begun a new chapter in its history with the debut of a new head coach.

Ryan Heickert will be behind the bench when the Knights open the 2024-25 season at Western New England in Springfield, Mass. on November 1 as part of the Western New England Showcase.

Heickert takes over at Arcadia after three seasons as the head coach at Bryn Athyn College. The Oshawa, Ontario native played college hockey at what was then Neumann College (now Neumann University) and played for a national championship team in 2009.

He spent three years as an assistant coach at his alma mater before stepping away from on-ice duties but continued to serve as Neumann’s strength and conditioning coach.

Heickert spoke to what made the Arcadia position appealing.

“Being on the Philly area is great,” he said. “This is where I’ve been since I played at Neumann. Not having to relocate and have the opportunity to coach [at the NCAA level].

“And secondly is it being a newer program that is still trying to I think establish an identity and get its footing in in Division III hockey and the ability to step in and be a part of that is exciting.”

Heickert takes over the Arcadia program as it begins its fourth season. It’s the first season the Middle Atlantic Conference will have an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. As part of that transition, Arcadia has ended its affiliation with the United Collegiate Hockey Conference.

“It’s fantastic,” Heickert said of the new alignment. “Having an opportunity to step into a conference with an automatic qualifier and then getting back into the MAC and competing against some of the other schools that the other sports on campus are. And then travel-wise, it’s just fantastic regularly competing against so many local teams. It’s great.

Heickert spoke to how his years at Neumann as a player and coach shaped his own coaching philosophy.

“They were a team that hadn’t had much success,” he recalls. “I had some great coaches there and some great teammates, and I think what we want to shape here is the culture and I think they have thing going in the right direction.

“We have a lot of great guys on this team and I think what we can do is create an identity and a culture through hard work, teamwork, connecting with our community, connecting with the school, connecting with each other and building something that way.

The Knights have compiled a record of 18-51-7 through their first three seasons.

Heickert says his recruiting efforts will emphasize finding players that fit the program as people as well as hockey players.

It’s a lot of getting the road,” he said. “Watching video, watching how guys play but then outside of that talking with their coaches talking with their GMs getting to know how they interact with their teammates and then getting to know them. Making sure they’re going to fit what we want and fit that culture.”

• Arcadia’s first seven games are on the road. The Knights’ home opener is set for November 21 against Stevenson.

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The MAC Will Have a New Look This Season

The Middle Atlantic Conference is taking a big step forward this winter as it embarks on its first season with automatic bids to the NCAA Division Three men’s and women’s hockey tournaments.

With the addition of the Misericordia University men and the Hood University women to the conference lineup, the MAC now includes six men’s and six women’s teams, the minimum number for automatic qualifier (AQ) status as of this year (the previous minimum had been seven teams.

In addition, Neumann University and Wilkes University will be aligned with the MAC as associate members for both sports.

The men’s alignment will include Alvernia, Arcadia, Kings, Lebanon Valley, Misericordia, Neumann, Stevenson, and Wilkes.

The women’s alignment will feature Alvernia, Arcadia, Hood, King’s, Lebanon Valley, Stevenson. Neumann, and Wilkes

“I think it’s an important step forward,” said MAC Executive Director Megan Morrison. “We don’t have that many sports around the conference that we aren’t able to provide a home for in terms of the regular season and postseason and access to the [NCAA tournament].

Hockey was one of those where a number of our institutions had to play in a single-sport conference.

“Not only to grow the sport of hockey but to have our schools have hockey under MAC umbrella, which has a little bit wider-recognized than a single-sport conference, we certainly thought it was the right move.”

The conference will play a triple-round-robin schedule (21 conference games) followed by playoff semifinals and finals.

“This certainly allows them to have a little bit less in travel expense,” Morrison said. “Nobody loved a triple round robin but I think it’s a great place for us to start. And with everyone being so conscious on campus of expense it’s a win in that way too.”

Morrison says the realignment of the conference offers some recruiting advantages
“We’re still a young conference when it comes to hockey,” she said, “and programs that have hockey, but now, having access to the NCAA championships probably provides them with a better chance of winning a conference championship and going to the NCAA than potentially where our schools were playing previously (in the United Collegiate Hockey Conference). So, that’ certainly an upside.”

Morrison notes that some of the freshman hockey players enrolling at MAC schools will be entering college after playing junior hockey and thus will be older than the typical college freshman. She says the older first-year students offer a unique viewpoint,

“Oftentimes, institutions tell us that older students bring a different perspective,” she said, “more experience to campuses, which is a good thing.”

The conference first sponsored ice hockey during the 2017-18 season. Morrison, who assumed her post in July of 2020, says achieving AQ status was something conference administrators had been looking forward to.

“It certainly was I think in the back of the minds of all of our schools that have started hockey over the last several years,” she said. And probably in the back of their minds when they started hockey and knew they were going to have to play in another conference.

“but the one of the benefits of being a large conference is to come together, and schools can say ‘We’re thinking about ice hockey’ and other schools can plan that way and that can be something a whole conference moves towards.

This is one example where that did happen including that early vision, certainly long before my time, came to fruition.”