The difference between high school sports and college sports is a major one, as high school student athletes no doubt find out across the nation as they grow up, and it is quite an achievement when someone does bridge the gap between the senior year of high school and the freshman year of college. The sport ceases to become merely an activity, but more of a lifestyle when it comes time for a student athlete to become a college student athlete.
To many, Cape Cod is considered a tourist destination, not an athletics hotbed. The larger towns in Central Massachusetts and Southern Massachusetts can produce more athletes with better potential, but Cape Cod can produce a diamond in the rough, too. It's just that scouts aren't as inclined to make the commute to watch public school athletics on Cape Cod. Kids out here have trouble getting the exposure to scouts and college coaches unless they shell out money to participate on a travel team or in a clinic.
Max Willman, a Barnstable native was recently drafted by the Buffalo Sabers of the National Hockey League. This after four years of hockey at Barnstable High School before a post-graduate year at Williston-Hampton. In fact, Willman almost gave up on his hockey career after his Barnstable ice hockey career didn't leave him any future options on the ice. To push back the sun on his career and to give himself more chances to be seen, the prep year was the only conceivable option.
After considering going to Quinnipiac as a student just more than a year ago, Willman was drafted by the Buffalo Sabers in the fifth round of the 2014 NHL Draft.
