The PeeWee Girls took part in our annual home town Mitchell
Girls Tournament this past weekend coming away with the Silver Medal.
Congratulations girls!
They opened their tournament on Thursday night against a strong Walkerton team. During this game our girls just weren’t aggressive enough and with many missed plays, Walkerton capitalized and totally dominated the game and the scoreboard winning 7-0.
With this game over and behind us the girls had some discussion on where improvement needed to be made, the girls would go and get rested up for their next challenge.
After attending school for part of the day to learn their A,B,C’s it was now time to hit the ice and show what skills they have as a team to Ilderton. We had already played Ilderton once in our league season and the score was very much in our favor that time but this time, Ilderton came prepared as they we ready to fight back. Ilderton would open the scoring in the first period with two goals and not allowing us to get on that board. With the start of the second period and roar from the crowd, our Mitchell gals came out to play and scored to cut the Jets lead to one within the first couple of minutes. Brooklyn Gethke would fire that puck right in the net with line mates Erica Pletch and Emma French holding those Ilderton girls back to set up the scoring play. Time winded down in this period and we just couldn’t seem to catch the break we needed to score the equalizer. Second period would end with us trailing by a goal. The third period was do or die for our girls as they need to pull a rabbit out of a hat to score another goal on their goalie as she was stellar! Play was back and forth in both ends and neither goalie willing to budge with the clock that seems to be counting down so fast and looking like time was going to run out on us, the announcers called “last minute of play in the third period” and with a nervous group of fans from both teams, Mitchell got that puck back down into the Ilderton’s end and Makayla Beuerman made a mad dash to the bench to add the extra attacker. With the crowd and players from our opponents bench counting down from 10 – guess what – we scored; we scored to tie the game with 8 seconds left on the clock. Whoo who! Erica Pletch would score that all important goal with Brooklyn Gethke and Taya Cornish right there to add their assistance. Everyone lined up at centre again for another faceoff but it would settle nothing as time ran out and the game ended in a 2-2 deadlock. Whew, what a comeback in the last minute of play and with this tie it still gave the girls a chance to maybe play in the final on Sunday.
Saturday, a new day and our final game of round robin play to determine if we would be playing in the finals the next morning. Game action would be against Wilmot. This is a team we had never played before so it should be an interesting and intense game. Everyone took their positions and play had started. Our Meteors started the game with one thing in their mind, to score the opening goal of the game and Emma French did just that within the first couple of minutes from the hot stick of Erica Pletch. Wilmot answered right back during the period to score twice and take the lead 2-1 going into the second period. Second period would end the same with no change in the score and us still behind by one. Not many chances by either team during this period as each team had four shots on net. Both goalies were holding their own and giving their team to opportunity to win.
After a quick break between periods and chat from our bench staff the girls were fired up to make this their period. Emma French would score once again start the momentum of our girls. Brooklyn Gethke was there to give her a hand. Less than a minute later, Alexa Hahn would score the all important go ahead goal and game changer. Alexa you were in the right place at the right time to tip the puck in off the shot of Brooklyn Gethke. Yesss, we finally were making some magic happen! As we had control of the game and a slim lead of one, Makayla Beuerman stood tall and made some amazing saves to shut down the Wilmot girls, with the hope that we could keep this pace going for the remainder of the game. “Last minute of play” was broadcasted through the arena; Erica Pletch decided she needed to make sure we would win by scoring with 39 seconds left on the clock and Emma French earning another assist. This time it was our girls counting down the clock and once the buzzer sounded, with the scoreboard in our favor 4-2 a pile of girls celebrated on the ice. With this win, it gave us the record of 1 win, 1 tie and a loss in round robin play. With that record - Finals here we come and it would be a rematch of our first game of the tournament against Walkerton.
PeeWee Final was here and we knew it was going to be tough as Walkerton had dominated the whole tournament in our division. This game we wanted to prove to Walkerton that we can play much better hockey than we did in our first match and we did just that. All the girls gave everything they had in the first couple of periods but in the third period, we just starting losing steam and allowed Walkerton to take advantage of that. One thing that we were able to do during this game was score on Walkerton, their goalie hadn’t allowed a single goal all weekend so it was great to see one go in. Our loan goal was from a mad scramble of players in front of the net but Brooklyn Gethke would somehow find the back of the net with Emma French and Erica Pletch out front getting it free and passing it over to Brooklyn. Great job girls on that hard fought struggle. The final score of the game was 5-1 giving us the silver medal.
You girls should be proud of what you accomplished this weekend. We all enjoyed watching some very intense and close hockey games.
The girls will now turn their focus back to league games as they have two home games this week, Thursday and Sunday night. Good luck girls.