NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat U14 Mayhem goaltender Jacqueline LeBlanc celebrates at the final buzzer of the Mayhem's 6-3 gold-medal win Sunday at the Moose Rec Centre over Calgary South at the Ed Horvath Invitational.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Two Medicine Hat ringette teams defended home ice this weekend at the Ed Horvath tournament.
The U14 Mayhem and U19 Live Wire kept the gold at home, winning their championship games Sunday at the Moose Rec Centre. The Mayhem beat South Calgary 6-3 and the Live Wire topped the Bowview Bobcats 8-6.
Mayhem head coach Loralee Eastland says the gold medal was all the coaching staff wanted for their players and she was happy to see the work they’ve put in so far this season pay off in front of friends and family.
“The difference for us being down here in the south where we don’t get a lot of games, is the consistency of each game as we move forward,” Eastland said. “There’s always something to work on. My girls are really great about focusing on what the coaches are asking them to do. So it’s literally just that matter of momentum from each game.”
After opening their tournament with a tie on Friday, the Mayhem recorded a win and a loss in their remaining two round-robin games. A semifinals win earned them a spot in the finals where they didn’t look back.
Breanna Lanuk had two goals and two assists to lead the offence with Lacey Gibney adding two goals and an assist of her own. Sloane Berstad had a goal and an assist and Brea Butterfield scored a solo marker. Jacqueline LeBlanc and Sophia Smith split the duties in net.
The Mayhem trailed 3-2 at the half before scoring four unanswered to take the gold. Eastland says the message to her team was to remain positive and enjoy the moment.
“I told them they were gripping their sticks a little bit too tight, they’re getting a little bit nervous and trying to do things on their own,” Eastland said. “So get back to just playing Mayhem ringette, supporting each other, using your passes. We put (LeBlanc) in for the goalie change at halftime and it was just an awesome effort.”
The U19 Live Wire went a perfect 5-0 on their weekend en route to a gold medal, outscoring opponents 41-20. They were in cruise control in the finals with a 6-2 lead early in the second half before Bowview rattled off four straight goals to tie the game up at 6-6.
A power play goal from Hannah Thompson, her third marker of the game, was the winning notch that put Medicine Hat over the top. Head coach Rod Thompson never lost confidence with his group.
“A lot of times, what we need to do is we just need to control the emotion,” Thompson said. “We need to make sure they stay positive and just be resilient, work through some of the things that we have no control over. That’s exactly what they did.”
Kayla Robinson had a goal with four assists, Sophie Kerr chipped in a goal and three assists, Mackenzie Tindall had a goal and an assist and Kamryn Reid found the back of the net. Kyree Stern-Rebmann made 27 saves in net for the win.
Thompson says winning the local tournament and doing so with familiar faces in the stands is something they should be proud of. There’s no rest for the Live Wire, as Thompson says they’ll get right back to practice at the start of the week and get ready for the rest of the season with a little bit more recognition on them after their second tournament win of the year.
“We’ve got a list of some things we have to work on because we know now after winning this tournament, our second tournament, the target is kind of on our backs,” Thompson said. “When you play strong teams like Bowview, it exposes a few things that we need to work on. So we’ve got a list of a couple of things that we need to polish up.”
Medicine Hat’s U16 Mercury finished their tournament with a 2-2-1 record, fourth in their age division. The local U12C team went 0-4 on the weekend and the U12B team was 0-3-1.
Four U10 teams from Medicine Hat competed over the weekend, with the U10 Step 3 Gators finishing 2-2. The U10 Step 2 Black team was 0-4 and the U10 Step 1 Team Yellow and Green pulled a combined record of 4-1-3.
