Tanner Ericson (No. 4) of the South Okanagan Midgets fires a backhand shot towards the Nelson Midgets netminder, while teammate Dallas Keller (No. 4) looks on during round-robin action at the Provincial Midget Tier 3 Championships last Thursday at the Sun Bowl Arena. Photo by Keith Lacey
After a rough start on opening day, the South Okanagan Midgets kept getting better and better and came within a whisker of qualifying for the semi-finals at the B.C. Midget Tier 3 Hockey Championships.
And after three consecutive decisive victories, head coach Jim Liebel said his team was playing as well as any team in the entire 11-team tournament and could have done some serious damage and perhaps won it all.
“The most frustrating part is we’ll never know,” said Liebel, whose team got in as the host squad at the provincial tournament, but showed they were a quality hockey team by rebounding with three wins after two tough losses on opening day in the week-long tournament.
“I’m tremendously pleased with where we ended up compared to where we were when we started the season … it was like night and day. Having to play at 7 a.m. on opening day wasn’t the best way to start the tournament and then we didn’t play again until 8:30 at night and we just didn’t play well that second game, but after that we were as good as any team in this tournament in my opinion.”
After getting soundly defeated by Kerry Park 8-3 in the tournament’s first game, the South Okanagan Midgets were defeated 3-1 by Whitehorse, in a game which eventually sealed their fate.
To their credit, they rebounded with some outstanding hockey and whipped Quesnel 4-1, before defeating Abbotsford 4-1 and Nelson 2-0. To get into the semi-final, West Vancouver Islanders had to defeat Quesnel, but lost 4-1 and that was the end of the tournament for South Okanagan as a tiebreaking formula gave the final semi-final spot to Quesnel.
Knowing his team went to a third-and-deciding game against the eventual provincial champion Kelowna Rockets again proves his team was rock solid and deserved to be playing against the best teams in the province, said Liebel.
“Kelowna are the provincial champions and we gave them everything they would handle in our league finals,” he said. “I can honestly say that our team could compete with any team in this tournament and beat any team if we played our best hockey and I think we were playing some outstanding hockey after opening day, so it’s really too bad we didn’t make the semis.”
A four-minute gap in the second period of the second game against Whitehorse turned out to be the difference as the visitors scored two goals to take a 2-1 lead and then scored an empty net goal to steal the win and put his squad in tough knowing they had to win their three remaining games and get help, said Liebel.
“We did what we had to do by winning three games very convincingly, but we needed some help with the tiebreaker and we didn’t get it, so it wasn’t meant to be I guess,” he said. “But our kids know they could play with any team in this tournament and they should be very proud of how they played and how far they came from the beginning of the season to almost making the semis in the provincials.”
The other good news from the tournament is many of his players played good hockey in front of numerous scouts from Junior A and Junior B teams spread across the province and many earned tryouts as a result of their play, said Liebel.
“There were all kinds of scouts in the stands throughout the tournament and many of our guys have earned tryouts, which is great to see,” he said. “It’s nice to see them have those options. Several of our guys are off to tryout camps this coming weekend.”
Members of the South Okanagan Midgets include Dallas Keller, Tanner Ericson, Tylor Holz, Jarod Street, Christopher Tsigonias, Joseph Marcy, Kraig Leochko, Raymond Thomson, David Launier, Shelby Taylor, Michael DaCosta, Dylan Holz, Mark Agar, Blake Loura, Dakota Hood, Narcisse Mota Baptiste, Cole Veasy and Brett Anderson. Assistant coaches were Terry Dawson, Mike Harrison, Dale Holz and Ryan Liebel. Team manager was Barb Loura and stickboy was Ward Taylor.
