By Graham Perkins / At the start of the season, games against Port Moody’s Bantam A1 club weren’t exactly circled on opponents’ calendars.
“A lot of our boys came from house leagues, and they’d never played an organized system before,” said head coach Shaun Neighbour.
But the team didn’t seem to mind playing without much of a pedigree, and after losing the first two games of the season, they put together a 5-2 run that catapulted them into the upper echelon of Tier 3 for a time.
“You play how you practice. Repeat, repeat, repeat. If you’re going through the motions, that’s what’s going to happen in the game,” Neighbour said of the team’s learning curve.
The team hit a bit of a rough patch after the winning streak, however, and only managed one win against Surrey for the rest of the season. They finished 6-10-2 and lost to Coquitlam in the first round of the playoffs.
But the Presidents Series provided the team with an opportunity to put together everything they’d learned all season, and they didn’t disappoint. The club lost to Abbotsford on the first day, then went on a remarkable 5-0-1 run while getting all but one of their sportsmanship points to set up a final showdown with Abbotsford on the last day of the series.
Port Moody had to win and get a sportsmanship point to get the banner, but Abbotsford fought to a 2-2 draw and won the group by a single point.
It was nearly a Cinderella finish for the boys, but they have to be proud of what they managed to accomplish. |