Bantam BB finishes 5th at Silver Stick Finals...
The Owen Sound Bantam BB
Home Decor & More Ice Hawks were in Aurora this past weekend to play at the International Silver Stick tournament and came home 5th overall in the 12 team tournament.
The team was hoping to make their way into the top 8 of the groups and the team met that goal after a thrilling 3rd game of round robin on Saturday morning!
The kids started off really well defeating the home town Aurora Panthers 2 to 0.
Natalie Tolton scored on a break away in the first period with assists going to Natalie Mole and Chesney Miller. The kids then had a set back after a scoreless 2nd period when they had to face some serious adversity losing Miller to an arguable Boarding call and what turned into a 2 game suspension.
The team rallied and killed off the next 5 minutes and then eventually scored an empty netter by Lyndsay Cumming from Kenzie Falls and Mary Green,
So with out Miller for their next game, the team was in tough against the 12th overall Huron Heat and lost 4 to 0 at the very large St Andrews College Arena. The team had lost 4 to 3 in an exhibition game to them earlier in the season, so they had a shot to win, and though we had good scoring chances and plenty of rubber on their goal tender, we couldn't bulge the twine at the end of the day.
So the team regrouped for Saturday afternoon to play the Rocky Mountain Rough Riders Under 14 A team to play for 2nd place in the pool knowing it would be top two to move on to the play off rounds.
The team saw probably the best team we have seen thus far this season, but answered back with their best personal team performance of the season and knocked them off 2 to 1 to secure the huge victory!
The first goal came off a huge face off win by Livi Hall on the right wing boards in the offensive zone.
Heather Koch received the face off pass at the top of the circle and sent it over across to her Defence partner Cecily Mallette. Mallette than made a nice fake and found Natalie Tolton off to the left side circle and she let go a lightning rod that found top shelf far corner over the glove hand to finish the beautiful sequence!
So the kids played amazing defence hounding the Rough Riders attack with relentless skating and work ethic through their fore check and on back checks in the neutral zone.
When that failed to stop the highly skilled USA team, the Defence were there to help slow things down with an outstanding effort, and from there our goal tender Sophia Fuller was stellar!
The Denver team got a penalty shot with 6 minutes left in the game, so the pressure was on Sophia Fuller who stood up to the task and shut the door!
With just 4 minutes left in the game, Denver finally got one by and tied it up 1 to 1, but with 2 minutes and 30 seconds left, Natalie Madill scored not only her first goal of the season after what has been a really terrific effort by her this season, but probably our biggest goal for the team so far this season to put us up 2 to 1.
Madill scored with assists going to Lara Dennis and Renayla Campbell.
The kids hung on with great defence the rest of the way and we took 2nd place in our pool and sent Colorado home.
So after an exciting game, the wheels did fall off as we played in the final of 4 Quarter Finals vs the Barrie Sharks. We had tied Barrie 1 to 1 earlier in the season in an exhibition game, but they were ready for us and got the jump on us, it was 3 to 0 after 2 periods but the final result saw us lose 5 to 0.
We are all so proud of the kids for putting up with such a fight facing adversities on calls, and being so young this season as a complete minor team.
The Home Decor & More Bantams will start their quest to hopefully qualify for Provincials for this upcoming April when they play host to the Walkerton Capitals in a first to 6 point series starting tomorrow night at 8:15pm at the Julie McCarthur Rec Center on the East Pad.
The points will be determined by a count of 2 points per win, 1 point per Tie, and 0 points for a loss. The series goes to as many as 5 games if needed with Owen Sound hosting games #1 tomorrow, #3 on Sunday, Feb 17th at 4pm (JMRC-E pad) and Game #5 if needed on Tues, March 5th at 8:00pm at (JMRC-W Pad)
Game #2 will be in Walkerton on Feb 14th at 8:45pm and game #4 if needed again in Walkerton on Tues, Feb 26th at 8:00pm.
The 2 teams combined for zero goals against in 3 games this season, they tied 0 to 0 in all 3 contests, so this should be a battle and with Walkerton being ranked #6 in the province, OS is the under dog for sure, but the kids had 5 teams from their league division including Walkerton who were all ranked in the top 10 in the province at BB level, and OS found a way to get points against all of them except Kitchener #2 overall.
Keep working hard girls, we're so proud of you to this date for all your efforts and achieved team goals and just believe in your selves and anything can happen!
Go Ice Hawks!!