The first championship team in the Prince George Spruce Kings' B.C. Hockey League history captivated the city last spring like no other Kings team that came before them, packing sellout crowds into the cozy confines of Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
Hockey fever lasted well into May as the Spruce Kings dominated their BCHL opponents and reeled in the Fred Page Cup and Doyle Cup trophies to advance all the way to the national junior A hockey championship final.
It was a dream season that fell just one win short of perfection.
"We had tremendous hockey players and we had such great young men and the defining factor was how well they got along," said Kings general manager Mike Hawes. "They all bought in to what we were doing and we never had one player who came to us at any point in the year to complain about icetime. They accepted their roles, played hard and were great kids off the ice and it just gelled."
That Kings team - the story of the year in Prince George sports - was no overnight sensation. It took three years to assemble that mix of talent, grit and brotherhood, and for that group of players to learn what it takes to win in the playoffs.
The seed was planted in 2017 when the Kings gave the Wenatchee Wild a scare in the first round of playoffs, rebounding from a 3-0 series deficit and coming within a couple last-minute goals from extending that series to the limit.
In 2018, after winning their first regular season division title, the Kings gutted out two seven-game series wins, and a five-game conference championship before losing to the Wild in a five-game final, their first since joining the BCHL in 1996.
Last season, armed with a veteran crew which included defencemen Layton Ahac, Dylan Anhorn, Jay Keranen, Liam Watson-Brawn; forwards Ben Poisson, Ben Brar, Patrick Cozzi, Dustin Manz and Nolan Welsh; and goalie Logan Neaton, the Kings were obvious favourites to advance to the Fred Page Cup final again and they dominated the playoffs like no other BCHL team had before them, winning 16 games and losing just one. They followed that with a six-game Doyle Cup regional championship win over the Brooks Bandits, but the Bandits got their revenge with a one-goal win in the national final in Brooks.
"We beat some pretty good teams last year, I wouldn't say handily, but when you go 16-1 in the playoffs, it's never been done before and probably will never be done again," said Hawes.
"It just goes to show the calibre of the players we had and the people we had on the ice. I've been in junior hockey long enough to know there are challenges we have here in Prince George that other teams in our league don't have - to bring players in and recruiting and geography and the amount of time we spend on the bus and convincing kids to come and convincing parents it's a good place to be. A few years ago we turned that corner and don't have that problem anymore, but it took a lot of hard work to get that. "
The Spruce Kings had won Peace-Cariboo and Rocky Mountain junior league titles but never a BCHL title. Now in his 16th season with the Spruce Kings, Hawes admitted he doubted that would ever happen, knowing there's no player draft to help recruit the best available players to a city whose closest opponent is six hours away.
"To be honest, if you'd asked me that five years ago I probably would have said no," said Hawes.
"Part of our thought process then was, let's put competitive teams on the ice that are entertaining and keep the doors open," he said.
"A few years ago it got to the point where I started thinking, what do we need to do to take it to the next level. We turned the corner I think when we brought Chad Van Diemen in as the coach and had a couple good seasons there and then we rolled Adam (Maglio) in as coach. The organization really took off from a player development standpoint and with the college commitments that we started to get, people took notice and I knew we had something special."
As a community-owned team, the Kings have always enjoyed a strong fanbase and that was never more apparent than in the playoffs, where people lined up hundreds deep to get their tickets before they sold out.
"The hockey people in the community who have been coming to our games for 25 years or longer and buying our show home tickets for that length of time, they know where that money's going and it helps us have success and move players along," said Hawes.
"You can't say enough about the community and the support we get. It takes a community to raise the Spruce Kings organization to where it is."
There was no shortage of exceptional local athletes whose accomplishments in their chosen sports warranted consideration for story-of-the-year status.
World-class professional triathlete Angela Naeth triumphed in her two-year fight with injuries and Lyme disease. In September, the 37-year-old Naeth won Ironman Chatttanooga in Tennessee to qualify for the world Ironman championship next December in Hawaii, where she will try to improve on her eight-place finish from 2018. She is the Citizen's choice as our comeback athlete of the year.
Marathoner Jacqui Pettersen's determination to try break the three-hour barrier going the 42.2-kilometre distance almost came to fruition in October, where the 48-year-old neurologist clocked 3:01 at the Berlin Marathon. Her time was good enough to qualify Pettersen for the age group world championships in April in London. She's also locked up a spot in the Tokyo Marathon, March 1, the only one of world's Big Six marathons Pettersen has yet to race.
Pro baseball first baseman/outfielder Jared Young continued his climb to the major leagues in April when the Chicago Cubs promoted Young to the double-A Southern League Tennessee Smokies. The Cubs' minor league player of the year in 2018 hit .235 in 123 games for the Smokies and went on to play in the Arizona Fall League for the Mesa Solar Sox, among a group of 180 minor league ballplayers selected for the AFL.
Motocross racer Jess Pettis started the year racing stadium events in the United States and by early February as a rookie on the AMA Supercross circuit he posted five top-12 finishes before an injury in practice sidelined him. The 22-year-old still had a cracked wrist when he started the Rockstar Energy Triple Crown MX tour as the defending 250cc points champion and still managed to finish second overall in the national points standings.
Prince George lost two of its sports legends in 2019. Fred Doig, the "father of lacrosse" who brought the sport to the city in the early 1960s, died at age 91 on June 11 after a lengthy illness. Jack Meda, a former Canadian heavyweight boxing champion, died at age 73 on Sept. 22 of a heart attack.
