OLDS — The U15B Grizzlys have revenge on their minds.
Their goal is to win gold at a tournament to be held Jan. 28-30 in Medicine Hat after a team from that city won gold at an Olds Grizzlys U15 tournament, held Jan. 7-9.
The Grizzlys took silver in that home tourney.
"Hopefully we redeem ourselves and take gold in their tournament. That’s our goal,“ U15B Grizzlys head coach Michael Latimer said during an interview.
“We issued the challenge to the boys last night at practice that that’s our goal for the next two weeks, is to get ready to go down there and win their tournament.”
Latimer said the Grizzlys, playing in the B side of the home tourney, won two of three games in their pool.
Their only loss was to Medicine Hat, who they met again in the final.
Medicine Hat beat them 6-4 in that gold medal game.
The final score might suggest that an empty-netter was involved, but that wasn’t the case, Latimer said.
“They actually scored a legitimate goal, kind of in the last minute.” he said. “We were down by one.”
Latimer said U15B Grizzlys goaltender Dax Walker played really well throughout the tournament.
“He played exceptional in all the games, which helped us win,” Latimer said.
“Our defence played quite well, but then our forwards just ran into some tough defence on the other team, so they just had trouble finally putting the puck in the net.”
COVID hasn’t been a problem for the team so far, according to Latimer.
“We haven’t lost any player-games yet to COVID, at least that we’ve been notified by,” he said. "We’ve had some kids who have been sick or injured or missed a few games here or there, but never officially (due to) COVID.
“And we’ve never had to delay a game or anything yet this season, due to COVID. So we’ve been very fortunate on that front, because I don’t think that’s the case for all the teams.”
