The moment David Kidd realized Durango’s club hockey team didn’t belong came last year in Aspen.

They brought a “skeleton crew” 250 miles over major mountain passes to a firing line. Aspen took 50 shots on goal compared to one for Durango and won 20-0.

“They completely plastered us. The kids were just demoralized. We knew we don’t belong in this league,” Kidd said. “That was probably the low point, the realization that a change has got to be made. We have to know who we are.”

Those were the old days in the Continental Divide Youth Hockey League, an “A” level league largely composed of teams from the Front Range that pull players from pools in excess of 200 and skate year-round.

Compare that to a Durango squad that skates from November through April and has 140 kids in its entire youth hockey program.

The six-hour, white-knuckle drives and regular lopsided losses just weren’t worth it anymore.

Enter hockey operations director Dell Truax, who helped facilitate a move into the New Mexico Interscholastic Ice Hockey League. Truax took nearly all of the scheduling responsibility from head coach Steve Martin, allowing the coaching staff to focus on coaching.

“He’s really tied everything together. Scheduling with the rink, scheduling with the other teams, all of that interaction, he’s taken over all of that,” Martin said. “It allows us to just coach the team.”

Durango also changed the classification of its club from an under-18 club to a high school club, which allowed it to compete in the new league. The distinction appears minor at first, but it evens the scales more for Durango.

The league is made up of teams from New Mexico with a few from Texas.

“Geography was the big (reason). Now all our road trips are 3½ hours, let’s say, with only one or two being more than that,” Truax said. “We’re always going south, where we don’t have to go over the mountain passes and through the snow.”

The move also represents a step down in the competition level as Durango faces teams such as Los Alamos and Taos that feature similar ice and player pool restrictions.

Through 18 games, it looks like the right decision.

The Durango Devils are 10-8 and have outscored their opponents 79-63 so far, putting them roughly in the middle of the NMIIHL standings.

“I think it’s a better fit now,” said senior Brad Tarpley, son of Brad and Tracy Tarpley. “It gives us room to grow without the pressure of always having to perform top-notch or we’re going to get creamed.”

Durango features a top-15 point scorer in the league in sophomore Benji Mickel, who has 13 goals and 13 assists.

“We’re fast. We’re a young team, but we’re fast,” Martin said.

They also have some room to grow before the playoffs, which start in late February.

“Everybody makes the playoffs. We have really not been able to have our team cohesively together yet this year. It’s hard to get together and practice, so our hope for the rest of the season is that we’re slowly melding together as a team, and it’ll start to show,” Martin said. “We’ve had a lot of close games. I don’t think our record truly shows where we should be in the standings. I think we can pull that together the rest of the season and surprise some people in playoffs.”

The program’s on-ice goals are modest, but the plan outside the rink reaches higher. Within the Durango Area Youth Hockey Association, Martin and Truex want what leaders of every youth sports organization since Pop Warner have: To grow the game and foster a love of it at an early age.

“The biggest deal is the youth. The high school program will take care of itself if we continue to grow the program from the bottom,” Truax said. “The more kids we get playing hockey and loving the game, the more kids will want to play when they get to the high school age. We’ve got to look to two or three years ahead. If we can grow it from the bottom up, we’ll have enough players to feed through the program.”

That process already has started. There are more than 140 kids playing hockey for DAYHA this year, up from 113 last year. And Chapman Hill has 70 kids in its introduction to hockey, learn to skate and mini mite programs.

“They’re all going to move up,” Truax said. “We’re establishing that feeder.”

The second part of the larger plan is to have the high school team look different by the time those kids reach their freshman year. Durango currently is registered as a USA Hockey High School team, but the team competes as the Durango Devils instead of under Durango High School’s banner.

The Devils want to be the Demons.

“My goal as the hockey director is to be a club team self-sustained. We’re not looking for money. We’re not looking for anything from them other than being accepted as part of the athletic program at the school,” Truax said. “I’d like for the announcements to be made at school, be in the yearbook and eventually, over time, I’d like them to get a letter, too.”

There is a precedent for such an arrangement within the district: the Animas High School and DHS cycling teams. The program is operated by Devo but competes under the Demons’ and Ospreys’ banners.

“It’s the same thing. We don’t have a club bike team at the high school, but there is an area-wide club team that races,” DHS head coach Dave Preszler said. “We recognize those kids and could do the same thing here.”

To be clear, the hockey team is not attempting to join the Colorado High School Activities Association. The geography and timing of the schedule don’t line up in much the same way they didn’t with the CDYHL.

“I would like to stay in this independent league, or if something were to happen in this independent league, become more of an independent team, but because of geography and because of the calendar, CHSAA doesn’t really work,” Truax said. “It doesn’t fit.”

In order to reach DAYHA’s goal of club recognition, the program will need to prove it can produce the funding and numbers to sustain itself then receive approval from school administrators and the board.

Preszler certainly sees a way for both sides to benefit from the potential arrangement.

“This, obviously, is a process, but it’s got to be a win-win,” he said. “I have no intent other than the most positive experience for those kids. When kids get involved in something they love, it’s such a good, rewarding experience. Obviously, it’s a positive influence on their life. We want kids doing athletics of any sort all the time.”

Any changes won’t affect Tarpley, but he understands the potential benefits of playing as the Demons rather than the Devils.

“I think it’s huge. I think Durango High School has a decent fan base, especially for football and lacrosse even, too,” he said. “Hockey’s never seen that. We’ve never had kids from our local high school come and watch us play until this year.”

Crowd or no crowd, one league or the other, it doesn’t matter much to Tarpley. The hockey bug bit him early, and he’ll skate wherever there’s ice.

“You get to let everything out there – it’s like war on ice,” he said. “Every practice, I look forward to. With other sports, I’ve done wrestling and a few other sports, there’s been times it gets too much, and it’s not fun anymore. Hockey’s been my escape. It’s always fun.”

kgrabowski@durangoherald.com