By Maddox Weddle
From a hockey state to a basketball state the game he always loved is not easy to come around.
Junior Matt Boyle plays hockey for Westfield High School even though he is a student at Delta.
Boyle grew up in Woodbridge, a town in New Jersey that is about 35 minutes from New York City.
“(Hockey) was just a family thing,” Boyle said. “My dad always loved it and my family always loved it and I’ve just had a passion for it.”
When Boyle was a young kid he developed a love for the New York Rangers because at the time it was a close-to-home team. They play in Madison Square Garden in NYC.
“When I was like 7 or 8 me and my mom and dad went (there) to watch and it was just fun because I got to skip school the next day because of how late it was,” Boyle said.
Boyle moved to Muncie, Ind., in May 2022 because his dad’s job in the water industry moved him here.
Hockey isn’t an Indiana High School Athletic Association sanctioned sport so he has to play in the Hoosier League, which is a club league that is sponsored by the Indiana State High School Hockey Association.
Boyle got into the high school team his freshman year by emailing the president of the Hoosier League and filling out some paperwork. This process took about two to three months because they needed to find a team that needed players.
He got selected by the Westfield Rocks. Westfield is north of Indianapolis near Carmel. It is one of the 20 largest schools in Indiana with almost 2,800 students.
He just wrapped up his second season at Westfield with 12 goals and 26 assists which is a good amount especially him being a right defenseman.
Defense is also Boyle’s favorite aspect of hockey mainly because he likes the violence.
“I really like the hitting aspect of the game especially because I’m one of the bigger guys on the team,” said Boyle, who is 6-foot-5, 197 pounds.
It isn’t always easy for Boyle. He does a lot of traveling. The school he plays and practices at is over an hour away from Muncie.
To make the trip not as hard on him he stays over at other players’ houses before games.
“Sometimes it is but with my connection through my team I’m able to spend the night at teammates’ houses and get rides now and then but most of the time we plan ahead and make sure there’s enough time to go from point A to point B,” Boyle said.
He travels to practice every Monday and Wednesday. The season starts early September and ends in March.
The team got put into the state tournament by goal differential, which is the number of goals a team scores when the goalie is on the ice minus the number of goals allowed.
Unfortunately with playing a sport comes failure and heartbreak. They played a team they played four times and beat four times in a row and they went up 1-0 going into the third and final period. Then the other team evened it up and went to overtime. No goals were scored in the first overtime, but the opponents’ forward snuck in a goal in the second overtime to end the Rocks’ season.
Boyle is one of the team captains this year. His goal this year is to put his team in the same position and take the W.
“My goal this year is to win the state championship last year and to build up the team because last year we had a lot of guys that really brought down the team and of course we are gonna try to bring it back up again,” Boyle said.
