Headed to the Finals
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…
January 19th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
While our Summits were not successful in defending their MLK crown this year, I still say this was a great tournament. Hats off to all the people who organized and volunteered this year.
Yes, we took second, but this year’s tournament featured a higher level of competition than last year’s and I hope we will continue to draw more and stronger teams next year as well.
In Santa Rosa, we have found a worthy rival, and they are to be congratulated for playing a great game against us. We will be gunning to get back on track against them in their tournament in a few weeks.
Even though we didin’t win it all, we had a good weekend, and I am proud of each and every one of our kids. they played hard, and showed us the kind of team play we know they are capable of.
Finally, please join me in thanking our coaches, who did a great job to get the kids ready to play with very little time to practice and prepare after returning from Canada. We will have a better opportunity to get the kids ready for the Wine Country Face-off in Santa Rosa in a few weeks. So, hats off to Andrew, Brian, and Kevin, and heres three cheers for all our Summits!