With the Peewee Tier 4 B.C. Hockey Championships approaching, the buzz and excitement is building for the local peewee rep hockey team.
The team will have home-ice advantage, with the hockey tournament taking place at Grand Forks Arena from March 17 to 22, and the players want to ensure they put on a strong showing.
“We’re working as hard as we can in practices with conditioning to get ourselves in shape for the games,” said defenceman Tyson Soobotin. “We’re going to have approximately six (games) in five days so we’ll be tired if we don’t work on that.”
“It’s going to be fun, just having fans coming here to watch us,” defenceman Malcolm Turner explained.
“It’s going to give us a morale boost because we’re going to have people cheering us on instead of cheering on the other teams,” Soobotin added.
Some of the players are looking forward to facing some different competition.
“I’m looking forward to playing different teams we haven’t played before to see what they’re like,” said winger Emily Jourdin. “
When asked about the strengths of the team, goalie Kaeden Lane said he thinks speed is one of the team’s strong suits.
“Our passing is getting fairly good too,” said player Levi Weiberg.
Assistant coach and trainer Mike Jourdin said the coaching staff is putting the team through its paces in order to prepare them for the championships.
“We’re practicing twice a week and we’re just going through the curriculum of Hockey Canada and doing a lot of skill-type drills – two-on-ones, three-on-ones,” coach Jourdin said.
“We’re doing some dryland,” said Turner and, “A lot of skating,” said centre Nathan Jourdin.
In terms of predictions, the players felt that the team could make some waves at the tournament.
“It all depends on how we work,” explained forward Dayton Bryan.
“We can’t take any stupid penalties,” opined Turner.
“If we play well, we should end up in the Top-3,” Soobotin said.