The holiday home cooking was delicious for Lake Cowichan’s Kaatza Logging Atom C1 team.
The C1 Lakers managed to win all of their games during their tournament, Dec. 28-30, at the Cowichan Lake Sports Arena, as well as an extra game they had to play because of the uneven number of teams (seven) in the tournament.
Winning coach Duncan Baird felt his team did a great job playing six games over the weekend.
He commended the team’s goalie for having a couple of bad breaks early, but battling through them to come back.
In the final game against the Sooke Thunderbirds there were a few penalties given out to each team, something Baird attributes to the will to win, tiredness and the referees.
“They had the older referees for the last couple of games and they are a bit better at calling the penalties,” he said,
The other local participating team, the Lakers Synergy Safety Atom C2, also played well but a couple ties and losses left them last in the final ranking.
Still the kids skated hard back and forth as the score climbed. Keegan McKinlay showed he had a great puck control and used that numerous times to slide the puck into the net. “He’s a kid that always keeps going, his legs are constantly moving, something a coach is happy to see,” Synergy Safety coach Mike Waller said.
One minor incident sent Aiden Lawrence of the Cowichan Valley Mighty Midgets C1 team to Cowichan District Hospital for a check up. During an attempt on goal he fell and slid headfirst into the goal post.
He was examined and released, then returned to Lake Cowichan to suit up and cheer for his team from the bench. They won the silver medal.
Tourney co-ordinator Belinda Waller felt the weekend went great.
“All seven teams were evenly matched. Most games were extremely close. I would like to thank all the parents of both Laker Atom teams for volunteering their time to make the tournament successful. Thank you to our sponsors for their support.”