Until the weekend of Jan. 14-16, it had been five years since 100 Mile House Midget Reps had hosted a hockey tournament.
They broke that dry spell in style, bringing in teams from Fort St. James, Abbotsford, Ridge Meadows, Aldergrove and Westside for an awesome weekend of hockey, and then wrapped it up by winning the tournament.
100 Mile went 2-0-1 in round-robin play before heading into a very physical final game with Fort St. James, which went 6-1 in favour of the host team.
Team safety trainer Tom Turner says they’d expected a tighter game in that championship round, after beating Fort St. James earlier by a 3-1 margin in the opening game of the tournament.
The first tilt saw Fort St. James open the scoring in the first period. 100 Mile answered quickly with a power-play goal by Mark Boyce, off a nice pass from Kevin Raimundo. On another power play, Matt Pistell tipped in the home team’s second marker off a shot from the point by Reece Forman.
In the second period, Jordan Purcha capitalized on a misdirected Fort St. James pass from behind their net to secure a 3-1 lead and the victory.
100 Mile’s Micky Turner opened the scoring with a top shelf goal in the first period of game 2 against Aldergrove. The visitors knotted the score by the end of the first, and then popped in three unanswered goals in the second before an inspirational talk by coach Tyler Robinson got 100 Mile back on track.
Turner and Pistell then each added a goal before the end of the second, followed by a marker midway in the third period by 100 Mile’s Tyler Craig, which deadlocked the score.
Aldergrove scored once more to take the lead, and with 30 seconds left on the clock, Turner evened it up to 5-5 with a hat trick goal.
Boyce, Craig, Kevin Raimundo and Orland Bramslaven each contributed to a third game 4-1 win over Kelowna, which sent 100 Mile to the championship final.
The rough, penalty-laden game saw five Fort St. John players ejected before it was all over.
Raimundo, Purcha, Turner and Travis Wilkie contributed one goal apiece and Boyce added two for their 6-1 victory.
Third place went to Abbotsford and Aldergrove finished fourth.
