The action was fast and furious at the third annual Western Regional Pond Hockey Championships over the weekend, with staggering wins, heartbreaking losses, and a whole lot of fun.
Despite the warm weather that forced the competition to be rescheduled - 12 of the original 27 teams consequently dropped out - organizer John Reed was happy with the event, raving about the great ice and “the best volunteer team ever, a rock star team.”
“That’s key,” he said, “identifying a core team of people who can work together. They worked huge hours, didn’t want to relinquish their duties, and not one complaint.”
He also loved the ice, the best in all three years. “Ray Von [Raymond Von Diebeisch], the ice guy, he’s the crux move of the whole thing every year. They call him the ice-savant and his degree of expertise and commitment is phenomenal, so hats off to Ray,” Reed said.
“There aren’t a lot of Rosslands out there on any level,” he added, “but especially in terms of having a concentrated array of recreational acess. It’s quite a special place.”
Most importantly, “the quality of hockey was great,” Reed said. “There’s independent variables like nightly festivities that really slow people down! But it was some great hockey.”
The Kootenay Valley Railway Gilnockie Ruttin Bucks (KVR) - a group of ex-pro and college players from Nelson, Castlegar, and Trail sporting red pants and wigs - took the men’s championship division with a sound 27-16 win over hard-skating Top Shelf of Rossland, a “pulled together” beer-league entry with freshly minted green jerseys.
Before the game, KVR captain Aaron Shrieves was cautiously confident.
“We played each other a couple times yesterday. The second half of both games were real tight; this team works hard, they make some nice passes.”
Afterwards, Top Shelf captain Eric Hill of Rossland wasn’t sore. “We tried. It was good times. [Yesterday], first game they completely blew us away, second game we knew what to expect. Maybe next year we’ll be a little closer.”
In the same division, Rossland’s Rusty Blades found themselves short-manned (and consequently over-oxidised) in a couple games. They got their sticks together for the final games, but it just wasn’t enough to pull through.
“Jeremy showed up, which was unexpected, and we grabbed Tom’s neighbour Steve and threw him in,” said Jon A. MacDonald. “Steve’s a great player, he even showed up with one of the best Christmas sweaters I’ve ever seen.”
They pulled it together on Sunday morning, and were “actually winning at one point” against Top Shelf’s “hotshots,” but it was an “early game with frozen skates,” MacDonald said while munching on a burger whose purchase supported the Castlegar Hospice Society. “It was a bad idea to leave them in the truck.”
Sunday’s snow was a factor for the final games, as two teams of players from Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, and Rossland fought for the women’s division title, ultimately taken by the Organic Drycleaners with a 16-5 rout of the Kootenay Wild Things (KWT).
Megan Olson of the Drycleaners explained that the team came together playing for Chix with Stix. “We have some good players,” she noted: the captain, Jaclyn Haines, played for Ohio State, and three others played for the West Kootenay Wildcats.
Olson loved every minute of the tournament. “We have a blast,” she said.
Natalie Levasseur of KWT concurred. “It’s a total highlight. It’s fun, it’s outside, it’s a community draw.” She was happy with how her teammates played under captain Erica Bailey. “They’ve played for years, since they were young children,” Levasseur said. “They’ve got the heritage from Trail in their blood.”
In the most tightly contested match of the tournament, the beer leaguing Rossland Dads of Lifeworks, last year’s champions in the men’s recreational division, were taken down by the Outlaws in an overtime skirmish tied for points and decided by penalties.
Jarret Mason scored for the Outlaws in the final second of the game, and the 22-22 tie sent the teams into overtime that ended 5-5. But the Outlaws won due to one less penalty.
Outlaw captain Mark Brooks said their Trail-Fruitvale-Montrose team “started playing together just this weekend” and were happy they took the title.
Lifeworks have played all three years, but were surprised they’d earned 22 points in the first game, speculating that their score was due to penalties accrued by the Outlaws, a quirk of pond hockey.
“Goal tending, probably hooking, tripping,” guessed team captain Trevor MaCaulay, but it was all in good fun for him and the others in the “gentleman’s division.”
There’s no doubt that pond hockey’s a different sort of hockey, and no doubt among the teams we interviewed that they’d had a great time and want to come back for more, but the big question remains: winter carnival weekend or not?
Some preferred it last year when it was “packed” with crowds in a “party atmosphere,” while others thought it was better on it’s own to avoid juggling events, especially with kids.
Whenever it’s scheduled, “next year the date will be firm,” Reed assured us. “We’ll lock down the [arena] as a backup, then we’ll have a tournament we can actually guarantee. So if we’re driving in from Calgary, say, then we know we’re going to play hockey and have a couple beers and we’re good.”