Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Wyatt's first AAA hockey tournament

I wanted to post a few pics from Wyatt's first tournament with his Warrior team. Thus far in youth hockey, they mostly do drills and scrimmages with a tournament once during the winter. However, this consists of our hockey club (woodbury) playing against another hockey club from around the city and it's not a real 'tournament'. It's more like several scrimmages in one weekend in cross-ice games. So this was his first tournament play against other AAA teams from around the cities and these games were full-ice. What an exciting weekend it was! The kids won on friday night 10-2. Apparently they were feeling pretty confident because they lost their first game on Saturday morning 12-4. But thankfully we won our game on Saturday night 5-4 (on a goal in the last minute to win), which sent us into the championship on sunday. 
The team we were set to play in the championship was the team that had killed us 12-4. But our coaches are amazing and stayed so positive with the boys throughout the whole tournament, constantly teaching and coaching and encouraging our boys (despite some other teams' coaches that were yelling and getting on the refs cases) and our boys pulled off a win! We got behind 0-2 in the 1st period but rallied for 3 straight goals and then the teams went back and forth scoring until we ended regulation at a  6-6 tie!! Seriously, I could not handle the nerves--and this is just mites! But we ended up scoring just a few minutes into OT and our boys were elated (and exhausted)!
Clearly they have all watched a game or two before because they knew exactly what to do--pile on the goalie!!!
The handshake with the other team, Legacy, who is known around the cities as being one of the better AAA teams
Warrior Cup Tournament Champs (Wyatt is in the front row, 3rd from the right)
After the game with the trophy, just outside their locker room.
It was fun for the boys that it was an actual 'cup' since many of the tournaments teams play in give our plaques or other things as trophies. So the coaches decided to treat it like the Stanley Cup and each player got to have it for one week. I found this picture on my camera a few days later....you can see the reflection of Wyatt taking a picture
The coaches encouraged the kids to be creative and take pictures of what they did with the cup, so Wyatt had a few ideas (I think prompted by Matt who has seen a picture or two in his life of what NHL players do with the Stanley Cup)
Eating cereal out of it....
Drinking out of it at a local donut shop..
What an exciting weekend it was for these boys! Our next tournament isn't until August, so we'll have a nice little break for the summer! But of course now that the kids got a taste of a big win, none of them want time off (but us parents do!!)

0 comments: