As winter comes to a close on the calendar, local hockey aficionados are already looking months ahead toward the sophomore season after a successful year for the sport in Craig.

The Colorado Extreme Hockey program and Colorado Fighting Elk junior team recently finished up their inaugural year in Moffat County, with players and coaches seeing tremendous growth physically and mentally.

The Fighting Elk completed its first season in the United States Premier Hockey League with a 6-37-1 record, a schedule that started as early as September and wrapped up with several playoff rounds across the end of February and beginning of March in California.

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The Elk went 0-3 in their final series — including 9-1 to the San Diego Sabers, 4-2 to the Long Beach Bombers and 10-0 to the Ontario Junior Reign — to conclude a season that assistant coach Jesse Keicher described as “an absolute whirlwind.”

Silas Larsen led the Elk in scoring with 15 goals, while Seth-Lenzini Oldaker was their leader in assists with 18.

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The squad saw continuous changes to the roster, though Keicher noted that the program will continue to improve going forward.

“Being a first-year team there will always be a bunch of ups and downs, but it is how the players decide to battle that adversity and rise to the occasion no matter the circumstances,” he said. “They have a great core of guys and with the beliefs and ideas being brought forth from the ownership and management, this program will be very successful in the near future.”

Keicher — whose experience in the sport includes competing at the semi-professional level — also headed up the Colorado Extreme’s 18 and under team comprised of high school and middle school ages. Many of the athletes had competed under the Craig Youth Hockey Association banner — which was absorbed into the existing Extreme program last year — but with a new name came new expectations and new steps.

“They have the skillset but just needed a lot of fundamentals and discipline. They needed direction and someone to guide them and help them with that and that much was clear. As they adjusted to my level of coaching and started to understand where I was coming from, they started to make serious improvement,” Keicher said. “At the halfway mark, this was a whole new team. They made a complete 180 and it was impressive. We took the number one team in the league to a 3-2 loss but took it to them the entire time where earlier in the year we would have lost by at least 10.”

He added that the 18U team went into playoffs as an underdog and took it into an overtime shootout scenario.

“My team outworked the opponent, and it just came down to a few bad bounces,” he said. “Every kid in the Craig program who stuck out the season has made major improvement, and I personally think these kids are going to be very, very good hockey players in the years to come.”

Jessica Binder, who oversees hockey operations for the Extreme and the Elk, noted that the new ownership allowed for significant improvements at the Moffat County Ice Arena, which allowed for more ice time for young athletes to work on their game whether in formal practices or more relaxed settings.

“We learned a lot and had a few bumps, but we love the new programming and everyone involved,” she said.

The growth was particularly notable in the youngest age groups, with Ripley Bellio coaching the 10U and 12U Extreme teams.

“I cannot express how incredibly proud of all of these young athletes I have been over the season. The amount of dedication that I have seen from all of them on improving was so impressive,” Bellio said. “We had several kids on both teams start in the Learn to Skate program at the beginning of the season, then finished out the season being major assets to the team and scoring their own goals.”

She added that the mix of seasoned hockey players and novices started to balance out by season’s end, which included a home tournament March 8 and 9.

As someone who competed in Craig hockey throughout her childhood, Bellio said she believes the Extreme program was a great way to build on what had already been established by CYHA.

“The program grew so much in just one season because of how affordable Extreme has made being able to play, as well the equipment that was provided,” she said. “They have so many great new ideas for the rink and growing with the community.”