For the local peewee rep team, the home weekend tournament was one of ups and downs, as the Eagles dropped their round robin games.
On Friday, the team lost 7-2 to one of the visiting teams from Portland, Ore., that had come to 麻豆社国产for the 12-team tourney.
The next day, 麻豆社国产went up against Langley, and while the team started out well enough, it found itself overmatched and lost 5-0.
This put the team in the bronze bracket as of Sunday, when it went up against the Tyees from Campbell River in what turned out to be the high point of the weekend.
鈥淵ou could see them start to gel,鈥� minor hockey association president Geordie Elson said.
Against Campbell River, Marcus Rempel opened the scoring for 麻豆社国产with a top-shelf backhander in the opening minutes, while Callan MacDonald followed with two more to give the locals a 3-0 lead after one period.
In the second, the Eagles added goals by Noel Harper and Jordan Plumb before Campbell River finally got on the board. Harper added one more in the period and a third in the final frame, while Emmitt Guest put the finishing touches on the 8-1 win.
On Monday morning against the second Portland team, the Eagles came up short, losing 1-0 in the bronze bracket final.
The tournament featured teams from Portland, Seattle, Vancouver Island, the Interior and the Lower Mainland, as well as the host team.
In the silver bracket final, it was the North Shore Winter Club over Surrey 7-2, while in the gold bracket third-place game, the Kerry Park Islanders came out ahead of the other Portland squad 4-1.
For Monday鈥檚 gold bracket final, it was all Cloverdale over Langley, as the Colts rolled out to an early lead and never looked back.
Cloverdale racked up three goals in the first period before Langley managed to cut the lead early in the second.聽
When Cloverdale鈥檚 Keagan Hadley, who was named the team鈥檚 MVP at the conclusion, converted a pass in front of the net to restore the three-goal lead at the 10-minute mark, all the Langley players could do was slam their sticks on the ice in frustration.
By the end of the second, Cloverdale was up 5-2 and added one more before the final minute of play. In the final minute of the third, Hadley had a couple of cracks at scoring an open-netter before finally taking a pass on a breakaway and skating in to seal the 7-2 championship win.
Early on, most of the games were low-scoring, close affairs, which was fine with tournament coordinator Dave Knight, who likes to see competitors of equal calibre.
鈥淎s a tournament director, I love seeing these scores,鈥� he said.
Knight makes a point to reseed teams after the round robin stages, so that everyone keeps playing and has a chance to take home some hardware.
鈥淲hat we try to do is make a balanced tournament,鈥� he said.聽
鈥淎s a tournament, everyone can win, everyone can lose.鈥�
The early season tournament provides an extra challenge or two for Knight and his volunteers because in most cases teams have only just been formed, so details like getting team photos for the posters or up-to-date lineups become a bit harder, to say nothing of trying to seed the teams in competitive brackets.
麻豆社国产will host several tournaments during the coming season.聽
Next up will be the midget rep Remembrance Day Tournament held from Nov. 11 to 13.
