A pair of Sunshine Coast Minor Hockey Association (SCMHA) teams earned medals last weekend at the Coast Winter Classic tournament, taking home a silver and bronze in Atom C and Peewee C respectively.
The Atom C1 Blues lost in the championship final to Aldergrove on Sunday, Jan. 11 in Gibsons after a tough 8-0 loss.
Head coach Mike Ricard said that coming in second place “felt really good, it felt awesome. I feel pretty happy about the kids experiencing that type of pressure. It was a good experience for them.”
He attributes their showing over the weekend to “hard work and determination more than anything,” and also said that, “they’re just really coachable kids, primarily. They take direction really well.”
There were eight teams in the Atom C portion of the tournament, the C1 and C2 Blues, West Vancouver, Langley Dirty Danglers, Langley Snipers, Aldergrove and two teams from North Delta. The teams were broken down into two pools for round robin play.
The C1 Blues, North Delta C1 and the Dirty Danglers all finished with 2-1 records after the round robin, but the Blues won the pool based on a better goals against, which set them up in the final against Aldergrove who won Pool B with a 3-0 record.
The C2 Blues finished with a round robin record of 0-3 in their pool and played West Vancouver in the consolation game on Sunday.
North Delta C1 beat North Delta C4, 8-3 in the bronze medal game.
In the Peewee tournament, the Blues beat the Cloverdale Colts in the bronze medal game after finishing the round robin with a 2-1 record.
“We have a team with a lot of varying skills,” said Peewee head coach Brian Geue. “The different players have all sorts of different characteristics that come together in a team where some players are better at some things and others [are better] at others. It comes down to character, I think — character and big hearts.”
The SC Peewee C1 Blues have had an impressive season with 13-0-2 record so far in regular season play.
“I’ve never had a game where, as a coach, I’m looking out on the ice and I can’t honestly think of one shift where I wasn’t impressed with their hard work,” Geue said. “It was a team win. I think it took every single kid doing their best to pull it off. I was really proud of them, for sure.”
Coquitlam won the gold medal after they defeated Surrey in the championship final. The Peewee tournament also featured eight teams with two pools for round robin play, with two teams from Cloverdale, and single teams from Surrey, Coquitlam, Langley, Whistler and the Arbutus Club.
The three-day tournament started Friday, Jan. 9 and was played at both the Sunshine Coast Arena in Sechelt and the Gibsons and Area Community Centre.
Tournament coordinator Lisa Stiver said it was a great weekend.
“The Peewees did really well with some really tough competition,” Stiver said. “Some of these teams that we had were really tough, like that gold medal game for the Atoms was incredible. The skill level of the team they were playing … I know they didn’t win the game, but they still walked away with silver. It was a really tough competition.”
See the sports ticker on page 44 for scores and standings and visit our online galleries at www.coastreporter.net for more photos and video from the tournament.
