The Prairie Hockey Academy’s inaugural season has been one of growth as the team has shown plenty of progress on and off the ice.

That was on full display this past weekend as the P.H.A. Elite 15s skated a 10-1 win on Saturday and a 3-1 win on Sunday over the Edge Academy Bantam Prep team out of Calgary.

The two wins on home ice at the Barkman Arena showed everything that the team has been working on this season coming together for a pair of dominating performances.

“That’s the best that I’ve seen our guys play, it’s where we’ve envisioned them being,” said P.H.A. head coach Rodney MacPhee. “The guys are starting to see all the rewards and benefits from all the time and effort that they’ve been putting in because our guys just dominated.”

The Elite 15s had met up with this same Edge team back in September, winning both games — 3-2 in overtime and 8-3 — on that occasion as well, but MacPhee said there was a stark difference in the P.H.A.’s play from the early season games to this past weekend.

“They said that they had so much more time, they were confident, the pass were good, so it was awesome,” said MacPhee.

“Everything was good, power play, obviously the penalty kill was good when they’re only getting seven shots in a game, it was a full team effort, give everyone credit.”

Their performance in the two games is a big confidence boost for the players and validation for the both the players and coaches after months of work.

The program at P.H.A. sees the players spend over an hour each day on the ice for practice, but they also spend time developing their game off the ice through work in the gym, with video and leadership classes, all which they’re given school credit for.

MacPhee said the benefits of all that work is showing when they hit the ice.

“They’re starting understand what we’re trying to do and are really starting to take hold,” said MacPhee. “We measure and weight them every couple months and two of our guys have gained 15 pounds and everyone in the gym is lifting more and more weights and that’s starting to show on the ice.

“Since we came back from Christmas to now, we’ve seen huge growth and everything they did pre-Christmas was building that foundation and now they’re starting to reap some of the benefits.”

On Saturday, Tanner Funk had a hat trick and four points to lead the way for P.H.A, while Atley Calvert had two goals and six points, and Caelan Fitzpatrick finished with a goal and three points.

In Sunday’s win, Calvert finished with two goals for an eight-point weekend.

P.H.A. outshot Edge 50-8 in Saturday’s win and then 60-18 on Sunday with Edge goalie Zoltan Bencisk turning away 57 shots to keep his team in the game.

MacPhee said with the amount of shots that they were able to produce and limit, it was a good example of their growth at both ends of the ice.

“They’re starting believe, you hear ‘trust the process’ and the process takes time, it’s not built over night,” he said. “The biggest thing for them has been sticking through the process and believing in themselves and starting to get that confidence.”

Next up for P.H.A. will be a trip down to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where they’ll play five games, three against the Grand Forks Aviators and the other team games are against the Fargo Freeze.

During the trip, the team will also get the opportunity to tour the Ralph Englestad Arena, which is home to Moose Jaw’s Rhett Gardner and the North Dakota Fighting Hawks. They will also attend UND’s showdown with St. Cloud State, who are the number one ranked team in NCAA men’s hockey.