This
weekend, our U10B team headed to Bradford for the Paul Dossey Memorial
Tournament, one of our very first tournaments together, and definitely our
biggest challenge yet. With only four teams in our division, every game
mattered, and the boys came ready to prove themselves.
The round-robin wasn’t easy. We had
some solid moments, some tough breaks, and a couple of losses that pushed us
into third place heading into the semifinals. But when the puck dropped in that
semi-final game, something lit up in them. The hustle was there. The heart was
there. And shift by shift, they battled their way to a well-earned win,
punching their ticket to the finals.
Waiting for us were the Kitchener Rangers, a team that had bested us the day
before. But our boys walked into the rink with fire in their eyes and hope in
their hearts, determined to rewrite the story. They played an incredible,
hard-fought game, tying it up heading into the third period. The stands were
electric. The bench was buzzing. And the boys refused to back down.
We pushed the Rangers all the way to overtime, where they finally broke through
in the last minute. No gold medal this time, just a hard-earned, well-deserved
second place.
But medals weren’t the real prize. What mattered most was what happened off the
scoresheet: the boys arrived as a group of kids and left as a true team. And
for us, that made the entire tournament a resounding success.