May 29, 2011 | Terry Whiteside | 1727 views
Quick Feet 98's Finish Season with Broze Championship.
It seems that 10 days off without practicing had a pretty significant impact on our lads. The passing and coordinated attck we had been expecting just wasn't there for much of the tournament.
On Friday May 27th we played the Thunderbirds 1st and they were a team we should have easily handled. The 2nd game we played the Puckhogs, who while a much better team than our first opponents, should not have had such an easy task beating Quick Feet.
Game 3 on Saturday saw us pick up our efforts against the Simcoe Spartans. They were likely the strongest entry in the tournament and we ended up on the losing end of a 5-3 score. We generated some chances and carried the play for spurts, but we still didn't maintain the intensity and the flow we had seen from the 98's in their first two tournaments.
Game 4 was another low scoring affair versus the North Central Ice Kings. The score ended 1-0 for the bad guys. Our team didn't generate a lot of good scoring opportunities, but the level of effort continued to get better.
On Sunday morning we were paired up against the Steeltown Stars from Pittsburgh for the Bronze Championship. Our guys played with good enthusiasm and battled through the usual poor refereeing to carry a 1-0 lead through much of the game. One of our undisciplined penalties did catch up with us and the Stars did tie it up for a short time. For the last 5-7 minutes of the game, you could see the systems and heads up play coming back into the minds of the Quick Feet players. After a few nice passing plays Quick Feet ended the game with a 4-1 victory and wer able to celebrate another tournament victory.
This ends our 2 month spring season for another year. I know that our coaches would all agree that our team is much improved year over year. We took many positive strides this year and can confidently say that we were not outclassed by any team in any of the 3 tournaments we participated in.
Thank you to all of the players, parents, coaches and fans of Quick Feet 98's. The season can be considered a successful one and will be a great building block for our players as they move into their winter season. Stay focused and work on your development guys! It is a marathon, not a sprint! The guys with the passion and commitment to focus on getting better will be rewarded with the success they desire.
This spring we introduced dryland training as a component in our program and all of our players really worked hard in the gym. This is a big part of their development going forward and it was great to give them a quick glimpse of some of the things they can do to impact their play.
Good luck to all of you in the upcoming winter season and I encourage all of you to look forward to next spring when we will continue on our development path.