Tremendous hockey tournament in Caracas at Colegio Los Arcos this past Saturday.
What a thrill for the kids to be playing on the only official in-line hockey rink in all of Venezuela.Please check out the ciplc website under the photos section to see great pics of the tournament.
Perhaps overall the results were not quite as good as we would like … but we have to take in account our school of 220 kids (half girls), a huge grade 3 and under population against 1200 boys from los arcos … when you put that in perspective – we did just fine.
This was the first time CIPLC had played at Los Arcos on their new rink, it was the first time for the elementary playing with a puck and only the second for the MS and HS teams too. So this was a big step for CIPLC hockey program. Parents and kids alike really were caught up in the excitement and several occasions' parents and athletes asked me if we could play hockey all year and do these types of tournaments more often. It is great to hear the enthusiasm and I will talk with our coach on staff and the local area and Mr. Martel and we will see what else we can offer next year.
Coaches Lemoine and Judd will enter some commentary on their respective teams experience and I will focus on the HS team. The HS team consist of only: Reynaldo Rodriguez, Blake Franklin, Jay Roff, Nathan Willett, and Jorge Acosta (a late comer), we also had the support of Alfredo Quilarquez and Gregg Pertsev but unfortunately they were unable to attend the tournament. This created an opportunity for Frabrizzio Montenari and Thomas Finco to step up and join the High schoolers.
Our first game was awesome, Blake scored in the opening minutes with a beautiful backhand. Goals were quick to follow from Jay and Fabrizzio. Basically we dominated play offensively and defensively … goalie Nate "the Gate" Willett was having a stellar game as well. Reynaldo contributed a pair in the second period and some how the score table lost another one of Blakes goales so a final score of 5 -1 was recorded instead of the 6 – 1. This was a terrific performance for a combo MS-HS team.
In the second game Los Arcos showed up with more High schools (upper classmen) that were not present for the earlier games. The new blood gave them the edge and they out played us to a 4-2 victory.
The hammer match was a great one right from the get go … very physical and very tense. L.A. scored early, then we rallied back to tie the game. At the half we talked about strategy, positioning and line ups and came out with our best plan of attack in the tournament. It worked and we scored first to break the tie. The game was going in our favor until we took a penalty and L.A. Capitalized to tie it up. With only minutes left we took another penalty so our hopes of finishing strong evaporated as we had to kill the time shorthanded. Time was still short so rather than play extra time (wich favoured CIPLC) we went straight into penalties (wich favors L.A.) …Long EMOTIONAL story short they won in penalties 2 -1 to take the series.
It was a fun experience for the players and they all want to keep playing and go to more tournaments. I wish there were more schools with hockey programs here in Venezuela. We will see what next year brings.
Last Updated on Thursday, 15 April 2010 07:26
