After finishing in eighth place in the round robin, the Valley U17 team returned home with gold from the Western Challenge Cup hosted by Sherwood Park Ball Hockey in Alberta.
The Valley U17’s faced some upsetting blown leads during the round robin, placing them eighth going into the quarter finals. The coaches rallied their players back into a positive mind frame and they pulled off three amazing upset victories.
It started with knocking off the first place seeded Delta U17s, 5-2, advancing them to the semi finals where they faced Victoria U17’s.
Victoria’s U17 team was no match for Valley U17s as they forced a mercy rule that saw the game end 3:39 minutes into the second period when Valley scored to win 7-0. This advanced them to the gold medal game against Surrey-Richmond U17’s.
They played another extremely smart game to squeeze out the Surrey-Richmond U17s, who were by far the favourites to win the U17 division. The team kept their heads in the game each shift, taking no penalties. At the end of the first period the score was 0-0. The Valley U17s scored with 7:16 minutes left in the game, taking a 1-0 lead. Then with 26 seconds left in the game, Valley U17 hit the empty net, solidifying the 2-0 win.
The Valley U17 team roster is Thomas McPhalen, Jake Wightman, Mike Fleugel, Parker Kubilius, Brady Seymour, Nic deKoning, Jacob Parkinson, Liam Silver, Troy Robertson, Samuel Iraqi, Jaydon Atkins, Joshua Boelema, Landon McArthur, David Jesson, Connor Morison and Allen Gillis. Head coach is Robert Parkinson, assistant coach is Kevin Parkinson, and team manager is Tammy McArthur.
