The Sunshine Coast’s Kolton Cousins returned home with a silver medal for Team BC from the Western Canada U16 Challenge Cup championship, which wrapped up in a close game against Alberta on Sunday, Oct. 23 at the Markin MacPhail Centre in Calgary.
A goal scored 31 seconds into overtime by Alberta’s Carter Chorney brought the final game to a 3-2 close, leaving Team BC with a very respectable second-place victory.
“I felt very excited to be given the opportunity to represent my province,” Kolton said. “Wearing a Team BC jersey has always been a goal of mine and I was really honoured to be selected.”
Kolton called the whole event a “first-class” affair, and said that the experience would stay with him forever
“The Team BC staff and my teammates battled hard the entire week,” Kolton said. “Making it to the championship game was a huge accomplishment. Unfortunately we came up just a bit short, but the memories created and friendships made will last a lifetime.”
Kolton said he benefitted from experiencing new and different coaching philosophies as well as an innovative way of using technology to boost the players’ performances. Players wore heart rate monitors to maximize shift intensity and recovery, which Kolton said was something he’d never experienced before.
The Western Canada U16 Challenge Cup featured the highest rated players in the U16 age category representing the four western provinces of Alberta, B.C., Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The four-team round robin format was the first step in the Hockey Canada Program of Excellence and assists the four western provincial hockey branches in evaluating the top prospects in this age group for future high performance programs.
The majority of players participating in the event were selected in the Western Hockey League (WHL) Bantam Draft in May 2016, and many of these top prospects will play major roles with WHL clubs in the seasons ahead.
Some notable players who have participated as part of Team BC include Curtis Lazar, now with the Ottawa Senators, Morgan Reilly, now with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Sam Reinhart, now with Buffalo Sabres
The U16 program is the second stage in the BC Hockey High Performance Program, which exposes players, coaches and officials to short-term competition. The U16 program also acts as a precursor to the Hockey Canada High Performance U17 Program, which is used to identify and train players and team personnel for provincial, regional and national teams.
“Hockey has always been my passion,” Kolton said. “My goal since I was young has always been to see how far I could go in the game. I attended my first WHL training camp with the Portland Winterhawks last summer and have been fortunate enough to have been added to their protected list recently.”
