For the first time in the history of the association, the Kerry Park Minor Hockey Association can hoist a U13 provincial championship banner.
Kerry Park’s U13A team are U13 tier 3 provincial champs following a 4-1 win over Trail in the gold medal game on March 22 in Aldergrove.
“They were pretty excited,” said head coach Darren Van Oene. “Everybody was pretty excited.”
The provincials were held March 17-22 at the Aldergrove Credit Union Community Centre and the Isles had advanced to the event after winning two games in their district championship best-of-three series against Cowichan.
The U13 Islanders went 3-1 in pool play, beating Arbutus Club 5-2 to open the event on March 17, before falling to Kelowna 6-5 the next day. On March 19, the Isles beat Quesnel 4-2 and then bested Trail the following day by a 5-2 score.
In the semi-finals on March 21, the U13 Islanders beat Terrace 6-3 to advance to the final against Trail on a high.
The final was never in doubt as Kerry Park kept the pressure up.
“We didn’t have one real big star, I think we had a really solid team all the way around,” said the proud coach. “It was a complete team effort.”
Cole Van Oene scored the only goal of the first period for Kerry Park with an assist to Ben McKamey. The pair switched roles for the second period’s first goal with McKamey scoring with a Van Oene assist to give the Isles a 2-0 lead.
Trail got one back but Mason Wallace restored the two-goal lead on the power-play to give Kerry Park a 3-1 advantage headed into the final frame. From there, Crew Shields potted an insurance goal and that’s all the Islanders needed to earn the victory and the championship banner.
“During the moment everybody was pretty excited,” Van Oene said. “It was neat to have all the parents experience it as well.”
It was made even more special in the knowledge that the team won’t ever consist of the same group as this year’s squad.
“Some of the kids will be moving on and/or leaving the association and this might be my last hurrah coaching,” Van Oene, said. “It was probably the last time this core group as a whole would be together because after peewee a lot of times the kids move on to other leagues or other things so it was kind of nice to end it up the way we did.”
The U13 Kerry Park Islanders are: Riley Arthurs, Luke Aitken-Boersen (A), Lennox Gill, James Holloway (A), Qais Rasul-Jankovics, Torin Kozma, Nathan MacDonald (A), Owen McFadden, Ben McKamey, Marcus Olsson, Myles Philp, Wade Sangara, Crew Shields, Jesse Spelman, Cole Van Oene (C), and Mason Wallace. The team is coached by head coach Darren Van Oene, and assistant coaches Steve MacDonald, Jason Taron, Josh McKamey and Brendyn Van Oene, with manager Nate Boersen.