Once again, the Southern Oregon Junior Summits have shown their skills and won their division.  In our recent trip to Santa Rosa, with hopes of getting back what was lost in our home tournament, the team put on the best performance I have seen from them to date.  We won our first two games and them lost our third to Santa Rosa.  Because of our team record and goals for vs. goals against ratio, we made it into the finals in the #1 position.  The second team would be either Santa Rosa or Channel Islands, based on the outcome of the Oakland Channel Island game.  It turned out to be Channel Islands.

What a game it was.  We scored the first goal and then the game was tied up 1-1.  The Riptide (Channel Islands) took the lead 2-1 only to be evened up at 2-2.  Play progressed and we found ourselves down 3-2 only to once again come from behind and tie things up at 3.  Let me drop in here the fact that we had out shot the Riptide something like 24 to 6 in the first 2 periods, so the team was wondering “what else can we do to get the win here?”  We dominated the game and just had trouble putting the biscuit in the basket as they say.  We hit several cross bars and posts, had many opportunities that just slipped wide, and many more opportunities that were thwarted at the last second.

Okay, jumping back into the game.  with only 2:45 seconds left in the third period, the Riptide once again scored to take the lead 4-3.  Our team was crushed.  Players lay on the ice in disbelief and dare I say grief!  We called time out and told the team they had all the time they needed to come back yet again.  We had done it twice before and could do it again.  “Shots on net” was the charge.  After the time out, the team took the ice and Cy Jenson took the puck over the blue line and floated a light wrist shot on net to start the attack.  The idea was to generate a rebound, but the goalie had trouble with it and it went in!  4-4.  We got ourselves into some penalty trouble in the third and had to shift our lines around a bit.  We tried Jeremy Wu, one of our star defenseman on right wing, but after a short shift said he could not get out of the defensive mind zone and he asked that another player take the spot so he did not risk a mistake.  (Worth noting here that we chose Jeremy after he stole the puck to create a break away goal while we were down 3 on 5 in the penalty kill!)  A coach later told me that not only did he make the play, but he just about “pulled the goalie out of his shorts” with a huge fake that sealed the deal.

So in steps Dylan Wu, another star defenseman.  He takes up the right wing slot and immediately drives the net after Cy won the face off.  Dylan circled the net and stuffed the puck in on the wrap around!  5-4 with only 1:30 or so to go in the game.  We ran a tight defensive line to shut things down, but unfortunately took another penalty in our zone.  With the other team’s goalie pulled they ran a 6 on 4 power play that was broken up with only a few seconds remaining by Wyatt Spence who banked the puck out of our zone off the boards and smack dab into the middle of the empty net.

Once our blood pressure dropped back to normal, we drank in the success of another fun tournament.  We look forward to what the future holds.  We know we need to practice and train for our remaining games and start planning for next year.  Stay tuned for more as the future unfolds.

One last note.  This season has been full of amazing statistics and achievements.  In this, our last official tournament of the year, Lindsey Courntey scoared her first goal with the team.  This is an amazing achievement because that now means that every player on our team has now scored a goal in tournament play.  That is very exciting.  Finally, some stats:  Our team record in Western Regional tournament play is 13-2.  We played three West coast tournaments and made it to the finals of all three.  We were champions of two and runner up in one.  Not a bad season indeed!

We’re heading down to Santa Rosa next week for our last scheduled tournament of the 2008-2009 season.  Although we play additional games through the remainder of the season, we are not currently signed up for tournament play after the Santa Rosa event.  We are all super excited and are looking forward to another fun tournament!

The stage is set for a great series of games.  As you may remember, it was Santa Rosa who we beat at the Silver Stick to get our chance in Pelham, Ontario at the International Finals.  You may also remember that it was Santa Rosa who beat us 3-0 in the championship game of our home tournament over MLK weekend after losing to us in the opening round 0-2.  There is no question that we have our hearts set on taking the trophy from their home tournament and bringing it back to Medford.

We do have some sick and injured players on the roster that may affect our chances; however, we hope to be healthy and ready to play come next Friday, the thirteenth.  Okay, that’s a little creepy for those who are superstitious (that would include most hockey players I might add), but that also gives us an advantage.  Paiute Morrison, our goalie, is number 13, so we are playing on his day.  Indeed the goalies have been the deciding factor in all three games we have played against each other this season.  We won our first match up 2-0 and our second match up by the same score.  Santa Rosa won our third match up 3-0.  Who will get the shut out this time?

Our team played a solid game today and simply lost to a team that played a bit better than us. Congratulations to the Santa Rosa Flyers for a hard fought victory. We will be back to challenge them in the Wine Country Tournament next month and look forward to this new rivalry! It is great to have such quality teams to challenge and grow our program and our level of competition.

I hope that the players, team managers and coaches of all the teams in the MLK tournament had fun and want to join us again next year. I also hope that we can get some time on the ice with these teams in between tournaments to help our teams improve and grow.

Congratulations to our Pee Wee Jr. Summits for a great tournament. Although we lost in the finals, we showed up big and played a great series of games. We finished the tournament with a 4-1 record and recorded two shut outs. Not bad indeed.

Finally, congratulations to the women and men who put on the MLK tournament. I believe it was a great success and better than last year. I think we will continue to draw more teams from further afield as news of our hospitality and game quality grows. Thank you for a great time!

It will, once again, be a rematch of the Jr. Summits and the Santa Rosa Flyers for the finals of today’s Martin Luther King, Jr Tournament.  Both teams were successful in their semi final bouts and have moved into the finals.  The game will be held at 8:30am and I imagine both teams are excited and nervous about the outcome.

In our semi final game, we faced the Oakland Bears.  Both teams played hard and I want to extent a special congratulations to the Oakland Bears team.  This was, by far, the best performance I have seem them deliver and they gave us a true run for our money.  Their goal tender had an outstanding game, stopping all but 4 of our shots (we had an empty netter as well).  Some of his saves were true robberies of our shooters.  It was an exciting game and I hope the Bears know what an amazing game they played.  I know that our team is well aware of it and of how close we came to not making the finals because of the Bear’s performance.

The Summits played a strong game as well, through all three lines once again and Paiute had another stellar performance in net.  This was a big game for us for many reasons, not least of which was that it was our first win where we came from behind having given up the game’s first goal.  That was a good test of our will and desire to win.  one which, happily, we passed!

Off to the finals…

Saturday proved to me that our Jr. Summits are indeed the great team I thought we were. We played the Santa Rosa Flyers in our first game and it was just as exciting as the game we played against them in the San Jose Regional finals. It was a 0-0 game all the way until the third period. Our team played with inspiration and skill. They controlled the puck well, passed well, played solid defense, and worked hard for the whole game.

In the third, hard work paid off when our first line: Cy Jenson, Wyatt Spence, and Elijah Assam freed the puck from a scramble behind the Flyers net and got a shot on goal (just one of many placed upon the very solid Flyers goalie). That shot was saved, but a patient move by Wyatt afforded him the game winning goal.  That goal was solidified in the last few minutes of the game when Cy put another one past their net minder. This was all backed up by another shut out by goalie Paiute Morrison, including a two man break away late in the third period! Paiute’s stellar performance earned him the game MVP medal.

In our second game, we faced the Oakland Bears, a team we beat in San Jose in two games including the semi finals. They played hard and tested our resolve to win, but in the end we prevailed. We had a strong showing from our third line who scored 2 goals in our 5-3 victory. Obviously the difference in the game, these goals were the result of hard work around the net.

Chase Courtney gathered the garbage and deposited it in the back of the net to score his first Pee Wee tournament goal. Jasper Weatherby found his second tournament goal in the front of the net on clean up patrol as well. Jasper also performed well in the face off circle winning many of his duels, even against their first line center. Jasper was the winner of the game MVP as a result of his hard work and strong play in the face off circle and around the ice.  (Check out the great picture below with the puck catching mesh!)

It was wonderful to see the team playing with the skill and patience they have been known for once again. I look forward to their continued efforts today and hopefully tomorrow in the finals!

Having just returned from our whirl wind trip to Pelham, Ontario Canada, the Jr. Summits have just days to prepare for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend tournament on home ice. Our first game is on Saturday at 10 am against the Santa Rosa Flyers. This promises to be a great game as it is a rematch of the championship game in the San Jose Regional Championships which we won 2-0. It was a great game and this rematch will likely prove to be equally as exciting. Come on down to the rink to support your Jr. Summits!

This is the only tournament of the year held on our home ice and it is a great opportunity to show your support for this amazing group of kids. The tournament will also be host to 6 bantam age teams (13 and 14) and will also include a silent auction/raffle with all proceeds going to support our local travel hockey teams.

Let me start by saying sorry to all of you who had hoped to follow along play by play with us here on line.  It is now 10: 15 pm on Friday and this is the first moment I have had to sit down and write about what is happening here.  It has been a non stop whirlwind experience.

I will start from the top.  We traveled to Pelham in several different groups and on several different airplanes.  Some of us made it to the hotel earlier than others.  In fact, the last group to make it arrived around 2:00 am Wednesday night (Thursday morning).  This was after a canceled flight and several lost bags, the most important of which was Paiute’s gear (our goalie)!  The airlines would do absolutely nothing to help us retrieve his bag and so we played the first two games of the tournament on about 3-4 hours of sleep, for about 5 of the team members, and borrowed goalie gear!!!  It was a disaster for sure.

Things turned around later that afternoon when all of our bags finally arrived.  That said, our record on the ice was not to improve.  We lost all four of our games and have now been retired from the tournament.  Hockey is everything here, and the level of play is FAR superior to anything we have seen on the West coast, North or South.  In my opinion, the teams we faced here could beat any team out of the Pacific division with reasonable ease.  Their skill in the fundamentals of hockey: passing, skating, and shooting is fantastic.  Their commitment to disciplined team play is admirable.  In most cases, it was the latter that made the difference.  The unselfish (REALLY unselfish) play was a true display of their desire to win as a team and to play as a single unit, not a group of individuals.  It was inspiring and humbling to watch.  Hockey in our area has a long way to go to get to this level of consistent growth and play.  I am excited to watch that growth!

To give you an inside look at how hockey lives here, imagine having 15 rinks in a 5 mile radius.  Imagine having a pro shop with several full time, fully skilled employees that is two stories tall and filled with everything you could ever want in hockey gear and the knowledge to properly outfit you.  Imagine showing up to a tournament and not having goalie gear.  What do you do now?  Here’s what happened to us. The tournament director personally drove us to the big pro shop whose owner met us there 2 hours before they officially open.  He then completely outfitted Paiute with everything from skates (custom sharpened I might add) jock, pads, glove blocker and chest protector.  Paiute had his helmet and sticks.  Now here’s the extra cool part.  Other than the skates everything was BRAND NEW!  The owner said, just bring it back when you are done!  I have never imagined such hospitality.  Truly amazing.

I could go on and on about this place and how much hockey is a living, breathing part of the experience, but I will stop with that save to say that this has been a humbling experience that will change the way our team plays hockey in Southern Oregon.  We plan to come back here and challenge the best again.  We plan to step into this new level of hockey and embrace it, learning what we can to improve how we coach and how the kids play.  Although we did not realize our dreams of coming home with the international championship, we have learned many valuable lessons that will bring us closer next time.

In the end, we are STILL one of the 16 best pee wee B teams in North America.  That is something to be proud of.  Congratulations to our team for all there hard work.

This is it. Our last week in Oregon before our trip to Pelham, Ontario! A small section of the team practiced yesterday for 2 hours on the ice. We had only 6 players and our goalie, but we made the best of our ice time. The rest of the team was away for the Holidays. Although we, as coaches, had wanted to get more ice time for the whole team before the Canada tournament, we were happy with the results of yesterday’s practice. We were able to spend one on one time with each of the kids. This allowed us to work on kid specific things. We left the choice up to the individual kid: what do you want to work on? It worked out well.

The conditioning was high too as with so few players, they ran through each team drill quickly which meant very little rest time in between runs. They worked hard and did well.

We will have a few more opportunities to get on the ice this week. I am encouraging all of the players to come to open stick time tonight as well as Saturday. We have dry land conditioning on Friday and one final practice on Sunday. This is our ice time and will be a full team practice.

I have encouraged the parents to talk with the kids and offer them extra emotional support as we get closer to the tournament. I imagine the kids might be nervous as this is a big deal. As I told the parents: “I go to win, but I will be proud of the kids and happy with them no matter what the scoreboard says. This is for them to have fun and an amazing life experience.” If you see any of the kids in this last week, please make sure they know you support them no matter what. The little extra support may be the difference in their experience.

I am excited to say that our very own local sports director for NBC 5 in Medford, Joe Camarlinghi, showed up at our practice on Sunday and did a series of interviews with me as well as some of the players. He also filmed some ice time of the practice and made a sweet spot for the team that aired on the 6pm news on Fox Channel 26 (the sister station) and the 11pm news on NBC Channel 5

We very much appreciate the attention he gave our kids and the genuine excitement he showed while doing the interviews and presenting the spot during the sports round up. Joe is obviously a supporter of local champions and sports in general and we thank him for his support.

I am excited to see all of the support coming in for these amazing kids. Thanks to all of you who have donated your time, money, and support to the team. I know they appreciate it very much and I do too. Although I have been extremely busy preparing for the trip, the added help and support has made my job that much easier so thank you.

We will have practice this Sunday, our first on ice practice since the tournament. I look forward to reconnecting the group and working on fine tuning some of our game. We will likely work on our power play execution to make that an even more powerful special team. And of course: conditioning, conditioning, conditioning!

Andrew Morrison

Head Coach