Jan 31, 2025 | Jess Pepin | 641 views
U11C are the "Silver Sweethearts" at the Orangeville Sweethearts Tournament
The Saugeen Shores OWHA U11C Team, sponsored by Global Pet Foods, captured the silver medal at the 45th Annual Orangeville Sweethearts Tournament, held on January 24-26th, 2025.
Our girls played three round robin games, capturing a confident 7-2 win against Kincardine, a 2-1 loss in back-and-forth battle against Twin Centre, and a come-from-behind tie in the last 2 minutes of their game against Temiskaming Shores.
Prior to the semi-final, Alex, Bria, Eva, Chloe, Ruby, Sloane, and goalie Teagan represented the Storm in a three-part skills competition, focusing on shooting accuracy, penalty shots and blocking, and a 4 legged-relay race. Our Storm girls gave everything they had in all three events, winning the overall Skills Competition for the U11C division.
Saturday evening saw our Storm girls compete against Temiskaming Shores in a nail-biting semi-final. In a closely contested match, our girls were able to take the game into overtime. In amazing three on three action in overtime, Bria score a beauty overtime winning goal, making the final score 2-1 and moving the Storm into the finals on Sunday.
Sunday saw the Storm return to the ice with determination and grit, to face off once again against Twin Centre in the finals. Despite controlling the play for the majority of the first period and having lots of chances, our Storm girls were not able to get onto the scoreboard first. Although Twin Centre scored twice in the second period, our team did not give up, and the team was able to bring the score to 2-1, heading into the third. Twin Centre answered back with a third goal in the third period. Our Storm girls continued to put pressure on Twin Centre, despite being behind on the scoreboard, and were able to score late in the third, making it a 3-2 game. With a minute left, and our goalie pulled to give us 6 shooters on the ice, our Storm girls battled to the last second of the game, but could not get past the Twin Centre goalie to tie things up.
Despite not coming home with gold, the U11C Storm girls had a wonderful weekend of hockey and can be proud to be the "Silver Sweethearts" in Orangeville.