MUSKEGON TWP. - As a lifelong student at Muskegon Catholic Central, Croix Klint grew up watching Crusader teams win state championships in football and baseball.
As a football and baseball player himself, he assumed that if he ever had the chance to compete for a state title, it would be as a Crusader in one of those sports.
Now Klint, a senior, is actually part of a team that’s playing in the state Final Four, but it’s not football or baseball, and it’s not for MCC.
He’s a forward for the Reeths-Puffer hockey team (MCC doesn’t offer that sport), and the Rockets are riding a 13-game winning streak heading into the Division 1 state semifinals on Friday against powerful Detroit Catholic Central.
The winner will advance to Saturday’s state championship game.
There are several players from different schools on the R-P hockey roster, but Klint has more of a natural connection than most. While he’s always attended MCC, he’s always lived in the Reeths-Puffer district, so he’s playing for a team that represents home.
“I love both schools,” Klint said. “Reeths-Puffer is my home, too.”
Looking back, Klint admits he's a little surprised that his first visit to the highest level of the state tournament is with the R-P hockey team.
His first season as a Rocket was in 2021-22, when R-P posted a not-so-great 6-18-1 record. The Rockets were much better last year at 19-6-1 but were still eliminated in the first round of regionals.
This year the team got off to a rough 2-4 start, and while everyone knew there was talent on the roster, few envisioned a serious state tournament run.
But the Rockets caught fire at midseason, won several big games with impressive comebacks, and now are two wins away from earning the big trophy.
Klint got hot about the same time the team did, and he has played a big part in the Rockets’ amazing run.
He had a three-goal hat trick and an assist when the Rockets beat Kenowa Hills 5-2 on Feb. 16. It was the last game of the conference season and left R-P tied with Sparta at the top of the O-K Conference Fischer Division standings.
He scored two goals in the Rockets’ 5-4 come-from-behind OT victory over Forest Hills in their last regular season game. R-P trailed by three goals two different times in that game, and the victory gave the team momentum for the state tournament.
He scored the team’s first goal in Reeths-Puffer’s amazing 4-3 comeback victory over Rockford in the first round of regionals. The Rockets trailed 3-1 in that game with less than two minutes remaining but rallied to tie the score and won in the second overtime.
He had three assists in the Rockets’ 6-2 regional championship victory over Sparta, which sent them to last week’s quarterfinals, where they beat Forest Hills again, 7-3, to advance to the Final Four.
As R-P Coach Dustin Langlois put it, “Croix is a quiet kid, and sometimes you almost tend to not notice him, but he ends on up the scoresheet almost every single night.”
Klint, who did not score a great deal as a sophomore or junior, is enjoying his new role.
“I struggled my first two years, really, but this year I have been able to help the team out more,” Klint said. “It’s been awesome.”
The key for Klint was being switched to a forward line with teammates Jaxon Stone and Eli Cuti, two great offensive players that he blended with beautifully.
As recently as last week, they were the top three-point producers on the R-P roster. Stone had 24 goals and 29 assists for 53 points. Cuti had only seven goals, but 34 assists, for 41 points, while Klint came in with 17 goals and 15 assists for 32 points.
“Both of those guys are great players,” Klint said about playing with Stone and Cuti. “They give me lots of opportunities to score. Usually it’s not even me. I will be just standing in front of the net and the puck goes in. It’s awesome.”
Even when he doesn’t score, Klint does a great job of setting up goals for Stone and Cuti, according to Coach Langlois.
“He’s great in the corners,” the coach said, mentioning that Klint uses his 6-foot-4 body to beat opponents to pucks. “He’s a tall guy and he battles along the boards and gets the pucks out to Jaxon and Eli.”
Klint’s contributions have not been limited to the offensive end. He is just as serious about stopping the other team from scoring as he is about scoring himself.
As a result, he is second on the team in the plus/minus statistic with plus-28. That means the Rockets have outscored opponents by 28 goals when Klint is on the ice. Only Stone is better, with a plus-34.
“I don’t like getting scored on,” Klint said. “I just think, you’re not always going to be able to score, but most of the time you can stop the other team from scoring. Sometimes that’s my focus out there.”
With a maximum of two games left in his varsity hockey career, Klint is excited to play this weekend, and says the Rockets are not afraid of Detroit Catholic Central, despite the fact that DCC is the top seed and ranked No. 1 in the state.
“They are the number one team, but they have nothing on us,” he said. “We are here and we have a chance to play and beat them.
“We know we will have some very tough competition, but we feel like nobody can beat us. We are not losing.”