St. John Bosco High School, which is competing this weekend at the 2025 Chipotle-USA Hockey High School National Championships in Irvine, California, for the 3A title in the program’s first season at the Division 1 level, is embracing its new journey as a high school hockey team.

Finding success quickly at the top level of high school club hockey has been a goal for Jason Stewart and Justin Reynolds, who operate Frontier Selects as the presidents of hockey and business operations, respectively. 

“We wanted to start an academy, prep school in the United States — and specifically the West Coast — because we feel that there was a lack of prep schools [with hockey] available for kids,” Reynolds said. “Kids were leaving the West Coast seeking prep school opportunities on the eastern seaboard, in the Midwest. We identified Southern California as an opportunity to create a program that is a prep school program with a world-class school such as St John Bosco, which is ranked top 10 in the country for athletics and academics.”

They started recruiting kids for the program with a worldwide search. 

However, for a coach, they didn’t have to look far, even though it might seem like they did.

Tomáš Kapusta represented Czechia at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, losing in overtime to Canada in the quarterfinals, a year after he played in the 1993 IIHF World Championship and earned a bronze medal. 

Kapusta, who operates Kapusta Hockey Academy in Riverside, California, attended a camp in Anaheim where Stewart and Reynolds quickly noticed him.

“We were impressed with what he did and so we had a conversation with him and it was one of the quickest yeses we've had over the course of our career in academy hockey,” Reynolds said.

Kapusta was attracted to the program due to the education-based approach. 

He brought a mix of European and American styles to St. John Bosco, which helped with recruiting. The roster of 16 skaters and two goalies not only includes Californians, but players from Arizona, Oregon, Canada, Denmark and Czechia.

Reynolds said all 18 players on the roster have multiple offers to play at the Junior level, which he said will be a continuing goal at St. John Bosco. First, though, they want to improve the depth of the program.

“For us to take the next step, it's more about continuing to build and not get complacent and build a more full team than we have now,” Reynolds said. “So, a roster of 20 and then maybe have a younger-age team as well. So, a 16U program to help develop the kids long term, instead of having a lot of kids one-and-done with an 18U program.”

St. John Bosco plays in the Anaheim Ducks High School Hockey League and finished second in Division 1 this season with a 17-4 record, then lost in the tournament championship game. This sort of season has been unexpected, especially from the early days of the team first assembling with all of the new players and coaches.

“It’s really seeing the development of the kids,” Reynolds said. “I look at where the kids started back in September and I watched our first practice, and I thought, 'Oh boy, we have our work cut out for ourselves here.' And then watching them today, I think about the journey of how much they developed and when you're practicing every day of the week and playing on the weekends and more, like an NCAA, college-style development model, which is what education-based hockey is, it's certainly how much they've improved to us is just a huge success. The wins and losses are definitely a byproduct, and it's exciting for that to happen.”

Stewart and Reynolds hope to build a robust stable of teams that go as many as five deep. A 16U team is on tap for next season with a girls team — pulled from other schools than the all-boys St. John Bosco — also in the thought process.

Even with St. John Bosco being less than 30 miles from Irvine, the roster of 18 players from not only across the country but around the world, Reynolds said the team doesn’t really consider itself having a hometown edge. 

Parents, as they have all season, are flying in for another weekend of hockey. Only this time, there is a national championship at stake.

“Our goal [this season] was to get to nationals and we certainly got there,” Reynolds said. “Now we're here and all the kids are gung-ho to try and win it. Obviously, there's some steep competition here and some great players and some great, well-coached teams. For us, just getting to nationals has been a tremendous feat and that's been one of the highlights of the year for the kids for sure.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.