Team NWT Peewees – including three players from Hay River – had a strong showing at a recent hockey tournament in British Columbia.
The team finished with a record of three wins and two losses at the B.C. Spring Showdown tournament, held from April 27 to April 29 in Burnaby, B.C.
Hay River's Shaun Demarcke, who coached the team, was pleased with the performance.
"They did well," he said. "They improved over the weekend for sure. The Yellowknife kids they were pretty good right from game one."
Demarcke noted the young players – aged 12 and 13 as second-year peewees – had to get used to physical play.
"They were pretty intimidated because it was body contact for the first time," he said. "It took about two games for them to kind of get a feel for the pace of the game and the intensity and the body checking for sure. Once game three came around, all the kids started to play a little better, play a little more intense and start throwing the body a little bit."
Demarcke explained the 12-team tournament was divided into gold, silver and bronze divisions, each with four teams each.
Team NWT Peewees topped the silver division.
"We basically finished fifth out of 12 teams," said Demarcke.
The three players from Hay River were Reese Leonard, Owen Pettipas and Jonathon Demarcke.
One of the goals of the NWT team's trip to the tournament was to give the peewees tougher competition in advance of the 2020 Arctic Winter Games when they will be old enough to play bantam hockey.
"It is to prepare them for the Arctic Winter Games two years from now so they can see the kind of the competition out there, the speed of the game, the intensity and all that kind of stuff," said Demarcke.
However, he stressed the tournament was not part of a selection process for the 2020 AWG team.
"It wasn't a tryout," he said. "It was just a number of kids from each region to try to give them an opportunity to play somewhere and play a different calibre of hockey."
In addition to the Hay River players, the team included eight players from Yellowknife, five from Inuvik and one from Fort Smith.