A fourth consecutive provincial championship wasn’t to be for the Kelowna Fripp Warehousing Rockets.
Still, head coach Lee Hamilton had only praise for his team and its silver-medal showing at the midget tier 1 B.C. Hockey championship last week in Comox.
The Rockets, who posted a 4-1-1 record in the round robin, reached the championship final, before going down to defeat 4-2 to the Prince George Cougars.
With just four returnees from last year’s B.C. championship team, Hamilton said the Rockets did a commendable job of growing together as a team as the year progressed.
“We would have loved to have the gold, who wouldn’t ?,” Hamilton said. “But the boys really had a great season.
“We have 10 guys leaving the team, so it was pretty emotional for them,” he added. “They were a really close group of boys, and it was really a good environment for them all to play in.”
The Rockets finished the 2015-16 season with a 32-16-7 record, which included winning the Wildcats Presidents Day Cup tournament last month in California.
The Rockets players are: Travis Mayne, Landon Markosky, Jameson Murray, Wyatt Head, Jack Froehler, Matt Alcorn, Quinn Van de Moselaar, Shay Cyra, Jacob Landry. Jeffrey Karpowich, Zak Keeler, James Fischer, Peter King, Curtis Magas, Brendan Speiser, Jeremy Hite, Ethan Hunt, Thomas Pattison and Raymon Bassi.
While the Rockets players, for the most part escaped sickness during provincials, the team’s coach and management staff, along with a number of parents, were hit with bouts of illness. Hamilton, for one, who contracted pneumonia, missed the final round robin game, a 4-1 loss to Saanich.
Assisting Hamilton on the Rockets’ bench is Larry Hamilton and Greg Fleming.
Scott Landry is the manager and Jess Bateman, the trainer.
