The Atom Rep Eagles soared away with the President's Banner after a round-robin tournament across the Lower Mainland last week.
Once knocked out of the Final Four Cup, the Eagles won every game in the Presidential Cup against Richmond, West Vancouver, Burnaby and the North Shore. "I'm proud of the boys," said head coach of the team of nine and 10-year olds, Murray Thrower. Thrower said he believes the hardest team they played was the Richmond Seafair, adding that the Eagles and Seafair are the two best teams in the league.
"It was a real bad-blood series," Thrower said.
During the Final Four, Seafair and the Eagles played three games each, won a game a piece, and battled for the tiebreaker, leading to an Eagles loss of 3-1.
The loss put them out of the Final Four Cup and into the tournament one level lower, the Presidential Cup, which the team swept to victory.
Thrower credited many players for winning the championship.
"It was a good all around team effort," Thrower said. The team only gelled late in the season, and had trouble winning games midway through. "The wheels sort of fell off," said Thrower.
Many of the players were in the rep league for the first time, but they came together at the end of the season, said Thrower, and played their best hockey during tournaments, eventually finishing third.
Team manager, Kal Kaila said he was pleased to see the kids start working as a team.
"They bought into the system," he said. Thrower's son Josh was the team's top goal scorer with 82 goals in the season, and is credited as being the team's best player, but there were other players who helped the team, he said.
"We had good goaltending," Thrower said of Brandan Koop, the team's netminder. Jamie Kawchuk also contributed defensively and Wyatt Verstuis and Kristan Simm were the team's workhorses, while Zack Sanderson and Malik Kaila contributed offensively for the team.
"It was a gritty effort by every player," Thrower said. This week, the Eagles played in the Aldergrove Spring Tournament. They beat Aldergrove 4-1 on Tuesday (March 20) in the semi-finals and lost to Chilliwack on Wednesday (March 21) in the finals. Thrower said a scout was watching the game and might take some of the players to a training camp in Alberta
