Mission Accomplished!

The Hamilton Heat U14 team came to Finland to have fun, make new friends and play some great ringette. Today we fulfilled all our objectives.

The day didn't start out so well. Still excited about our win over Richmond Hill yesterday, we went into our first game today against Haukat from Jarvenpaa. They bombed us 7-0, for our first loss of the tournament. Nothing went right. Fortunately, it didn't matter much. Richmond Hill had only managed a tie against Haukat earlier, so we were guaranteed a semi-final berth.

In the semi-final, we played Tampere. This Finnish city will host the Worlds later this year. We scored first, but they made it 2-1 with 11 minutes left. With our goalie out, we managed to tie it with 14 seconds left, forcing a shoot-out for the tie-breaker. After the initial 3 shots, each team had 1 goal. In the fourth round, Tampere scored and we did not, so Tampere took the match and moved on to to the gold medal game. We would play for bronze.

The bronze game was a re-match with Haukat, the team that had drubbed us in the morning. We were resolved that this game would be different.

Haukat went ahead with 2 goals in the seventh minute. Just over a minute later, we made it 2-1. Then it was 3-1, then 3-2. We couldn't catch them, but we were determined not to let them get away from us. The first half ended 4-3.

Haukat made it 5-3 half way through the second. With just over 4 minutes to play, we narrowed it to 5-4. Then, with 45 seconds left in the game, we scored a power play goal to tie the score.

In overtime, Haukat got into penalty trouble. With 2 Haukat players off -- one for a double minor and one for a major -- Taylor scored the winner on a rifle shot.

In the end, we played two gutsy games as we bounced back from a disappointing performance at the start of the day. Tampere and Nurmijarvi played for the gold...we had played both of those teams to a tie in regulation earlier in the tournament. We can say with confidence that we were the match of any team in the tournament.

And that is an accomplishment:

• We were the youngest team -- all 12 and 13 year olds when every other team had at least one 14 year old, and most were mainly 14 and 15 year olds.


• We were the smallest team -- only 9 skaters, when many teams had 15 or 16 skaters. We were even more short handed when stomach sickness shortened our bench on Day 1.


• We hardly knew each other -- our first game as a team was on Dec 28 in Sweden. We had never played as a unit before that, yet we were playing against club teams

But the biggest satisfaction the girls had was getting to know each other and bonding as friends. Coming to appreciate one another's skills and talents, both on and off the ice. Learning some new things about ringette and seeing a new and interesting part of the world.

What a thrill for us all, and we get a trophy to bring home with all the memories and photographs. We can truly say, "Mission Accomplished".

Congratulations to our friends from the Richmond Hill Lightning who won their final game to finish 5th in the tournament. And to the Hamilton Heat Open team who finished 3rd in their division.