This is a season about adversity and perseverance. The Central Indiana Knights are facing the former and needing the latter in a 2024-2025 season that is largely about building for the future while maximizing the present. This isn’t an easy season. It has a chance to be a productive one. “This season has been a bit rough from a record standpoint,” Knights Head Coach Rob Pozzebon said. The Knights, a hockey team made up of players from multiple area high schools including Cathedral, feature a largely inexperienced team in 2024-2025 with six freshman and six sophomores. They were 5-25 through mid-January. “We’re a very young team, so the record isn’t a huge surprise,” Pozzebon said. “It's a pretty young team and most of the teams we play are loaded with upperclassmen and it has just been a bit of a test the whole season.” Pozzebon called this “by far” the youngest team in his five seasons as coach. “The players are good, so we have a good core of talented players,” Pozzebon said. “They get pushed around a little bit because they're so young and kind of on the smaller side of things. We have a couple of big kids, but for the most part we are kind of undersized right now. “We built our own schedule and I think we built it thinking we would be further along than where we are. We started the season with one of our goaltenders playing football and the other goalie injured for the first 10 games of the season. We've been kind of digging ourselves out of a hole ever since.” The 2024-2025 Knights also feature a three-member senior class that includes team captain and third-year varsity player Charles McCormick – a center from Cathedral. McCormick, also a football player, is a contributor offensively who Pozzebon called “an excellent defensive player.” “He’s having a very good season,” Pozzebon said of McCormick. Pozzebon praised the leadership and perseverance of the entire senior class, saying of McCormick “he’s a quiet kid. We knew that when we chose him as captain.” “He’s a guy you follow,” Pozzebon said. “He works hard. He doesn’t take any shifts off. He practices hard. He plays hard. He blocks shots. He does all the gritty things. He doesn’t say very much, but people follow him because he works so hard.” Other Cathedral players for the Knights in 2024-2025: *Junior forward Daniel Michael, who previously played junior varsity. “He has been great,” Pozzebon said. “He’s a workhorse kind of guy. You want three or four of those guys in your lineup. He gives it everything on every shift. He’s very coachable. He works hard. He does the right thing at the right time. He's a good penalty killer and plays a little bit on the power play. He's one of these kids that is going to have a very good senior season.” *Freshman defender Quinn Ridgeway, a player with good size and the ability to develop as he grows as a skater and gains experience. *Freshman forward Noah Hiott, who Pozzebon said is a high-skill guy with scoring and passing skills. “Both are very good players,” Pozzebon said of Hiott and Ridgeway. Ridgeway and Hiott help form the core of a freshman class that figures to be part of the foundation of the Knights’ program in the next few seasons. “I think we're going to be very good,” Pozzebon said. “We only fill two or three spots for next year, one goaltender and a couple of forwards, so we are basically going to return almost the entire team next year. We don’t look at it from a multiyear standpoint and we don’t look past the seniors. But when we picked the team earlier in the year, we did so knowing we'd have a little bit of a struggle this year, but we have a couple of really good seasons to follow.” And Pozzebon said he expects the young team that is playing in 2024-2025 will grow into a balanced, competitive team in the coming seasons. “We have some high skill guys that are talented as sophomores and freshman,” he said. “We’ve kind of struggled in that goal-scoring area and I think it's a lot of that’s youth. A lot of our scoring is coming from our freshmen and our sophomores. “Once we get a little bit of maturity under our feet, those numbers will start to go up as they get older. That group will be more skilled as we get to next year. I think we have a gritty team. There' are lot good, young physical players.”