GRANITE CITY – Bryce Simon was one of the leaders for a young Alton hockey team this Mississippi Valley Club Hockey Association season.
The season didn’t come to an end the way Simon and the Redbirds would have liked as AHS was swept out of the MVCHA Class 1A playoffs by Belleville in the best-of-three semifinals, but Simon, one of three seniors on this year’s team, knows there’s a good future ahead for the hockey program.
“It was a rough game,” Simon said following Belleville’s 4-0 win over Alton at Granite City’s Wilson Park Ice Rink recently. “I definitely was hoping a little bit closer game, at least; we really wanted to get a win and come out of this one.
“We made it to round two; coming out of the season, going 3-12, we did pretty good after that. There was a lot of improvement over the year.”
Simon led Alton in scoring this year with 27 goals and 11 assists for 38 points, ranking him among the top scorers in the MVCHA this season.
There were many memories made for Simon during his four years with the Alton program. “I definitely made a lot of memories with my classmates,” Simon said.
Simon recalled Zack Hunter, a Redbird teammate who died in April 2016 as a result of injuries sustained in an auto accident. “It was hard to lose him this past year,” Simon said. “It was rough coming into this year; it was a huge disadvantage from the get-go, but it built us closer as a team. A lot of the time, we were playing for him; we wanted to do as good as possible for him.”
Simon got to know the newer players on the team and believes they will help make Alton an improved team next year. “I got to know a lot of the newer kids,” Simon said, “a lot of them freshmen and sophomores. I hadn’t gotten to play with them a whole lot, but got to know them over this year.
“Hopefully they can have a good season coming up (in 2017-18); there’s a lot of improvements to do, but they have some time ahead of them.”
