HE SHOOTS ...SCORES YOUTH HOCKEY PROGRAM OFF TO FAST START.

Byline: Gideon Rubin Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - It took less than two minutes for Joey Howard to grab a small slice of history.

Howard, a senior at Saugus High, scored the first-ever goal in the Ice Station High School Hockey League - which inaugurated the non-CIF sanctioned club sport Monday night in Valencia - 1:50 into the Centurions' 10-1 victory over a team representing Hart High of Newhall.

``I was excited,'' said Howard, who had three goals and two assists. ``Hopefully this will become a big thing in the West and we'll be as good as the East someday. Then I'll be remembered.''

Howard is among several players in the league who have already achieved national prominence. Howard, Hart High senior Kevin Davis and Granada Hills senior Pete Petersen compete in Tier 1 of the National Midget Level - the top echelon of their age group.

The six-team league includes four Santa Clarita Valley schools (Valencia, Canyon, Hart and Saugus). Also fielding teams are Granada Hills High, and a confederation of Antelope Valley schools that also has several players from Kern County, called the Northerners.

The 10-game season will be followed by two days of playoffs, which will be April 28-29, during the newly opened Ice Station's official grand opening.

The hope is that someday the six-team league that is now technically a club sport, will gain prominence and become sanctioned by CIF.

Also in works is a girls' club league. The Ice Station will host a clinic for girls players sometime in June, the first step toward creating a girls' league planned for Fall 2001.

``You have start somewhere,'' said Nick Nickson, the 20-year radio play-by-play voice of the Kings, who is serving as the league's honorary commissioner.

Nickson said the emergence of the league is a natural extension of the interest in hockey, spawned by the trade that brought Wayne Gretzky to the Kings in the late `80's.

``It seems like a natural fit,'' Nickson said, ``that with the facility in Santa Clarita, before long it will become a (CIF) sanctioned sport.''

Monday night's league opener was an important first step, but convincing CIF to officially sanction the sport will be a formidable challenge, according Larry Bruyere, the Ice Station's director of hockey.

``We believe it can become a CIF (sanctioned) sport if it's run properly and we can maintain interest, but it might take some time because schools don't have extra money in their budgets for a new sport,'' he said, noting that the prohibitive cost of equipment and ice time.

But regardless of what the future holds for high school hockey in the Santa Clarita Valley, the players in the area who for years have been playing traveling team games before empty stands, for at least one night, got to hear the sounds of cheering fans that in the past they've only dreamed of.

``Usually we go to all the football games and we're cheering all the football players,'' Howard said. ``I never imagined in ninth grade that we were going to have hockey in high school. This is my senior year and I'm excited to have all my friends out here and all the people cheering for the other team.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1) Hart's Preston May is knocked off his feet by Saugus' Jimmy Hock during play Monday.

(2) Hart goalie Coby Robinson looks back to see the first-ever goal scored during a high school game at the Ice Station in Valencia.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer