At the beginning of the season, there was some question as to whether Grand Forks could or should run a rep hockey team in the peewee division.
The numbers of players are always lower than neighboring communities, leading to difficulties in competing against those teams.
The Grand Forks Peewee Bruins compete as a Tier 4 team and the West Kootenays and Spokane are all higher tiers but play in the same league.
Peewee is especially difficult as you have vastly different maturing levels of players, leading to size discrepancies and compounding the problem is the introduction of body contact.
This year’s peewee team has a large number of players that are playing rep hockey for the first time
Nevertheless, the peewee team decided to play rep hockey. The team had tryouts and every player registered in GFMH (Grand Forks Minor Hockey) for peewee was accepted onto the rep team.
Every one of these players competed this year against strong hockey communities, like Castlegar, Trail and Nelson, and it has been a steep learning curve. However, the players’ hard work, determination and persistence are starting to pay off.
Grand Forks (GF) travelled to Sparwood the weekend of Feb. 4 to play in a Tier 4 tournament. A few players could not make the trip and for the first game, the team was also missing its leading scorer Chase McKay due to illness, although McKay would return.
Nevertheless, the team opened the tournament with a 10-0 win over Cranbrook – it had played Cranbrook’s Tier 3 team earlier in January and lost 2-1 so the win wasn’t a surprise but the margin of victory was, especially with the reduced amount of players.
The team was lead by many first year players that stepped up – Nathan Jourdin and Matt Donovan each had six points, Dayton Bryan and Malcolm Turner had four each and Tyson Soobotin also scored to lead the Grand Forks team.
In the second and third game, it was time for the veteran players to take charge. In game two vs. Elk Valley, Grand Forks found itself tied 1-1 halfway through game before McKay exploded for five goals to lead the team to a 7-2 win.
In game three, it was Kolby Horne’s turn as he netted three goals and an assist in a 9-0 win over Golden.
GF found itself in its final game facing Golden again. Golden came out much stronger this time and jumped out to a 2-0 lead before GF came racing back to complete the weekend with a 6-3 win.
GF goalie, Tieran Dolan, made some key saves when the game was 2-0 that changed the momentum and enabled GF to make the comeback.
“You get better by playing better teams. When we started the year 2-17 in our first 19 games the morale was down and chemistry on the team was not very good. It was difficult to convince 11 and 12 year-olds that these losses, against higher tiered teams, would eventually pay dividends,” Coach Darryl Turner commented.
“I give the players credit, they kept working hard and we slowly started having some success. We have won 12 games out of our last 23 and the players are really coming together. This weekend I was very impressed by how the group of players each played a significant role and various players stepped up when we needed them.”
Turner also added that the GF team is 13 wins 6 losses this year against Tier 4 competition.
The GF Peewee Bruins next see action on Feb. 25 against Spokane at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. at Grand Forks Arena.
– Submitted by Grand Forks Peewee hockey