state championships<\/a>. The Capitals were undefeated in the 10U Tier A state championships two seasons ago and won all but one game in the 12U Tier A state championships last season. The teams they opposed in those tournaments didn’t take very kindly to Juneau’s dominance.<\/p>\n“We were just starting to make enemies because they didn’t belong in the (Tier) A level anyone,” Capitals manager Kim Dostal said. “So we just really decided to push for this team and it wasn’t easy. There were a lot of naysayers, a lot of people that think Juneau shouldn’t have a comp team. But they weren’t there with us for these tournaments where people were calling us cheaters.”<\/p>\n
Former JDIA president Matt Boline could see the long-ranging benefits the team would reap from playing a new batch of teams.<\/p>\n
“For the long-term development of the athletes, it was just important that they compete at a level that’s appropriate for their abilities,” Boline said.<\/p>\n
In April, the Alaska State Hockey Association voted unanimously to allow the Capitals entry into the Tier AA league. Boline said the other seven comp teams from around the state were ecstatic about the move.<\/p>\n
“They were really excited to have some new blood to be in the league,” Boline said. “Because in Anchorage, they just play each other all the time and they don’t get to see a lot of these outside kids. A lot of these kids do go on to play high school hockey and know nothing about Juneau. So this is a really cool thing.”<\/p>\n
The squad is now getting set for its first of four road trips. The Capitals take on the Kenai Ice Hawks, and Alaska Oilers (Anchorage) in the Termination Dust Tournament this weekend in Anchorage. The team will host the Alaska Blue Devils during the last week of January. Each team in the league has to play a minimum of 14 games — two against every other team in the league.<\/p>\n
The state tournament is March 8-11 in Fairbanks.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It doesn’t take long to get a sense of just how much twins Jaeger and Stein Dostal think about hockey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":37139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[454,127],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-37138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-hockey","tag-juneau-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37138"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=37138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}