The Brock Wild Green team travelled to Cambridge this past
weekend where they played alongside 14 other teams at the Hespeler Classic.
With 15 teams at the event of which only the top 6 advanced,
the Wild were in tough to make it out of the preliminary round, but our Wild
were more than up for the challenge.
In the first game the Wild took on the Kincardine Kinucks. The Kinucks were no match for our Wild as we cruised to an impressive 6-2 victory. Cole Oke had 4 goals to lead the attack with singles from Colton Housser and Hayden Hunt. The goal by Hunt was the 1st of his young career and was a beauty blast from the point.
Later that day the Wild were at it again. This time they battled the Clarington Thunder and once again dominated the play enroute to a 6-3 victory! Oke would get 3 for his 2nd straight hat-trick while Brody Bugg, Housser and Johnny Malcolm rounded out the scoring. Malcolm’s marker was another 1st for this season and in the words of teammate William Parry “it was a beauty!”.
The next day the Wild would face a much tougher and larger opponent as they took on the Tilsonburg Tornadoes. The Tornadoes were in must win situation having lost and tied their 1st 2 games and came out at us hard.
Despite battling hard all game, the Wild would come up just short in this one as they suffered their 1st loss of the tournament in hard fought 4-2 decision. The Tornadoes were able to use their tremendous size to their advantage especially in goal where they had a behemoth goaltender making it difficult for our boys to find the back of the net.
Despite the loss, the Wild advanced to the quarter-finals as their 2-1 record coupled with our favorable goal differential was good enough to secure the 6th seed in the tournament.
This set us up for an early morning tilt with the 3rd seed on Sunday.
The Wild were in tough as they were up against an offensive juggernaut in the form of the West London Hawks.
Unfortunately, the Wild would fall in this one by a final score of 11-1. The score was not indicative of their effort as the Wild battled hard right to very end despite being down. Oke would score the games only goal for the Wild late in the game to end the Hawks bid for a shut-out.
Despite the outcome of the final game, the Wild should be very proud of their accomplishment over the weekend. 6th out of 15 teams is a very notable achievement for a small town team from Brock. More importantly than the wins and losses, this team showed a ton of character and really showed that they are coming together nicely as a team.
I think the following comment from one of our parents really sums it up very up well:
“I would like to say a big thank you to Julie and everybody who has put time, effort and money into organizing and carrying out this amazing event for our team! Our boys have shown great result in my opinion- to come 6th out of 15 teams and make it to the ¼ final is quite an achievement!! They impressed me so much with their last game – even with a very slim chance of winning they fought until the very end. (and some even after – lol)! They are becoming stronger as a team with every game. They have also become closer as teammates and friends.”
Team members in attendance at the event were:
Defense: Landon Underwood, Sebastian Kirkhner, Nathan Francis, Hayden Hunt
Forwards: Cole Oke, Colton Housser, Brody Bugg, William Parry, Damian Geissberger, Johnny Malcolm.
Goalie: Hayden Watt
Absent: Hayden Harder, Myself
Although I was not there to see all of the action, I heard from both other parents and the other coaches that the boys played some of their best hockey all year. I am very proud of each and every one of our players.
Keep up the good work boys!