18 players continue to wear the jersey of the ESC habfurt, at least one newcomer from another club joins the team, and six young talents from their own youth are to be slowly introduced to the first team: with a 25-man squad, the ice hockey regional league team starts the 2017/2018 season preparation next weekend with two home games against the EV pegnitz and the EC eppelheim.
At the fan table in the packed "hawks inn", while trainer martin reichert led the first official training session, ESC board members andreas kurz and holger endres had a lot of other information to share with the fans. Accordingly, on 8. October, when the hawks their first compulsory match against the "wolfe" from kissingen the decisions of the bavarian ice hockey association (BEV), a "constant – at least for the next five years: the negotiated mode with two state league groups and twelve teams each, of which the best five after a single round, interlocked with three teams from the bavarian league, then play for promotion, is to last until the 2022/2023 season.
For a victory after regular playing time, there are now three points, for a success after verlangerung or penatlyschieben there are two payers for the winner and one for the loser. "Finally, uniform rules have been established for all ice hockey leagues", andreas kurz was pleased. After the season 2016/2017 already started on 5. After the 7-0 win over straubing on february, he expects to play "at least until mid-march 2018"."
Players in trial training
ESC coach martin reichert has plenty of players at his disposal. Besides the old acquaintances like pascal marx, fabian vollert, max hildenbrand, martin hildenbrand, petr krepelka kilian hummer, michael breyer, ingo krapf, david franek, christian dietrich, georg lang, martin kohler, manuel kurz, marco hildenbrand, philipp bates, alexander stahl, lukas-andreas thebus, ilja kinereisch also newcomer galip hacker (EHC bayreuth 1b). Oleg seibel from EV pegnitz as well as jakub sramek will be tested in the coming days.
Especially sramek would have been a very big reinforcement, because the 24-year-old czech player was last under contract with the czech second league team HC most. He also gained experience with his hometown club HC litvinov in the 1st division. League and five times in the champions field hockey league. In addition, he was an integral part of the U18 and U19 national teams. At least during the preparation phase, the youth players christian schad, emil krein, lukas kratschmer, philipp muller, tobias hertwich and goalkeeper daniel schwab should also get regular playing time. Reichert will decide in the coming weeks which of them will ultimately make the leap into the national league team.
Andreas kurz was "absolutely satisfied" with this staffing level. We are absolutely on schedule, said the 48-year-old after "a few stressful weeks" beforehand. He is particularly pleased that the ESC has now also been approved as a training company. First "trainee is michael breyer, who has been supporting the youth management, the youth coaches and the board of management for a few days now as part of his studies in sports economics. Furthermore, the attacker, together with daniel gopfert, takes care of the maintenance and the attractiveness of the ESC habfurt in the social networks as well as the homepage.
However, a requirement made by the association, according to which every bavarian ice hockey club must have its own U8 or U9 team from the state league onwards at the latest in 2018/2019, is causing headaches not only for andreas kurz. He knows that the vast majority of bavarian clubs have had major problems with this rule because there are simply too few children for it. Although the BEV's efforts to get more children into ice hockey are "right," he says, "it's a good thing. But with such a hard rule you also imply to the small clubs that they don't do everything for it and that you have to force them to do it. But it can't be that small towns like habfurt are compared with nurnberg or munich", he said and added: "then the district league with 50 teams will play."