The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

D4 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, March 14, 2001 ------- On to their third OMHA final in four years The Oakville Rangers peewee AA rep hockey team, sponsored by Harper Detroit Diesel, Carlisle Syntec and Beacon Supply, defeated Brampton recent ly, 3-1 in their Ontario M inor Hockey A ssociation (OMHA) semifinal series. The Oakville squad has qualified for the OM HA championships in. three of the last four years. They will take on Aurora in the OMHA championships (dates TBA) with the winner advancing to the all-O ntario's. Head coach Roy Gringmuth is ecstatic with the team 's performance, thus far. "W inning the league for the fourth straight year was quite an accomplish ment for these young men. Sure, they only lost three league games this season, but the way they handled themselves was a credit to themselves and to their community. "Being top dog means you have to be up for every game, and some teams tried to intimidate us with a physical style o f play. The boys rose to the occa sion, by staying disciplined and focused on the task at hand." They hope to better their fourth-place finish in 1997/98 season and thirdplace in 1998/99. (RECAP) T his season, they beat Guelph in the first round (3-0), follow ed by St. Catharines (3-1) in the second round. How ever, their old-foes from Bram pton would prove to be a more form idable opposi tion. Brampton 4, OAK VILLE 2: game one start ed w ell enough for the hom etown team, who out-shot the opposition 31-19. However, the locals could not solve the hot Brampton goalie, who back-stopped his team to a 4-2 victory. Oakville goals cam e courtesy o f Carson Jenkin (unassisted) and Kyle M erstorf. Assists went to Jeff Sebben (single A call-up) and Brennan Kerr. O A K V IL L E 5, Bram pton 1: back in Brampton. O akville jum ped out quickly and dom inated the play, both offensively and defen sively. They outplayed, outworked, out-hustled, out-coached and out-scored the opposition, en route to a convincing victory. G oals were scored by Mike Turner (unassisted and shorthanded); Jon Fairclough (from Cory M artin); Jam ie M arch (from Fairclough and Jenkin); Kerr (from N ick D vem echuk and Turner) and Fairclough (from Shane Jackm an and M erstorf). OA KVILLE 2, Bram pton 1 (OT): the piv otal -game-three was a dandy, with the hom e town heroes bom barding the Brampton net from the opening face-off. However, the Brampton goalie's hot hand continued, enabling him to keep out all but one shot. The score at regula tion was 1-1, with O akville outshooting the opposition 35-9. Jenkin, assisted by Paul O 'H ara and Fairclough, scored the lone marker. In overtime. O akville kept the pressure on; keeping Brampton pinned in their own end. Finally, M ichael LeDressay broke the deadlock, winning a gritty goalm outh scramble. He was assisted by Kerr and Fairclough. OAKVILLE 5, Brampton 1: Oakville con tinued where they had left off from game three, com pletely dom inating the play, and m inim iz ing excursions into the O akville end o f the ice. The defensive unit o f Shane Jackm an, Jamie M arch, Brennan Kerr, N ick D vem echuk and Corey Martin put in a stellar perform ance, lim iting Brampton to ju st 18 shots. O akville were back-stopped by the goaltending duo o f Myles H arper and Oliver Wren, who m anaged to managed to stop all-but-one shot. O akville's forwards had a field-day at the other end, lighting the lamp five times. Goalscoring w as handled by Jenkin (2g, la ), Fairclough ( lg , 2a), M ersdorf (lg , la), Turner ( l g , la ), M arch ( la ) , H arm gardt (la ), LeDressay ( la ) and O 'H ara (la ). All that was left was for Oakville to shut Bram pton down in the closing minutes o f the game. The line o f Thom as Karthaus, Andrew Percival and Andrew Harmgardt, w ho worked ferociously to keep the puck in the Brampton end, handled this task with ease. , Photo by Erin Riley Does he have it? Standout goalie Oliver Wren appears to be taking a long look at his glove. Either way the Oakville Rangers AA rep peewee team went on to edge Brampton in a 2-1 overtime thriller in pivotal game three (see story). The Oakville Rangers peewee AA rep team have qualified for their third OMHA championship in four years. BACK ROW: (left to right) Norm Kerr (asst, coach), Kevin Percival (manager), Nick Dvemechuk, Carson Jenkin, Brennan Kerr, Jon Fairclough, Shane Jackman, Kyle Merstorf, Karl Wren (asst, coach), and Roy Gringmuth (head coach). MIDDLE ROW: Cory Martin, Mike Turner, Andrew Harmgardt, Andrew Percival, Mike LeDressay, Thomas Karthaus, and Steve Fairclough (trainer). FRONT ROW: Oliver Wren, Jeff Barsevich, Paul O 'Hara, Jamie March and Myles Harper. Bruins started to turn it on after the Christmas Break (Continued from Back Page Sports) "Their scoop is they are a very fast, very high scoring team. It's the one style of play that has given us a problem this year, sort of interchangeable parts -- forwards that can go out and play on the perimeter, perimeter guys that can go in and play in the post. That's what they're like. Nobody huge. They have a lot of guys between 6' and 6'4". They're sort of interchange able parts. "They lost the B.C. final in the final minute and a half (to Cariboo). They're kind of like us, in that they struggled to some degree until about Christmas and then were able to crank things up and finish veiy strongly to finish second in British Columbia." Sheridan, of course, managed to pull through in the Ontario provincial championship game, knocking off favoured Ball Hockey Halton BHL Men's (1 8 + ) & Old-Timers (30+ ) g e t th e m o s t g a m e s in th e t o p O a k v ille a re n a s a t th e b e s t p ric e plus P rovin cials & N a tio n a ls (905 ) 568-4522 members of the Ontario Ball Hockey Association Humber 89-87 in a double overtime thriller that coach Flack termed the most exciting game he has ever coached. "Yes, no question. Double overtime. The kid hits one from six to eight feet behind the three-point line to win with no time remaining." How many kids, he added, dream of that very play when they're in the gym alone, counting down the seconds -- five, four, three, two, one -- shoot and win the game. "He (Kevin Passley) did it. It was quite a finish." Things certainly didn't start out so rosy with the Bruins los ing two straight heading into the Christmas Break to drop to 22. At the time coach Flack huddled with his coaching staff proposing "to change styles." His coaching staff, he said, talked him out of it and said "just stick with what you always do and it will work out." "So we put a huge emphasis on defence in the second semester and all the sudden teams start scoring 5 5 , 6 3 , 5 1 , and stuff like that and we started to succeed and we rode that all the way. We rode a big wave of momentum into the playoffs and our guys got more confident as we went, and lo and behold..." While some, including this sports section have termed it a rebuilding year for the Bruins, particularly with the loss of three-time all-Canadian and last year's Canadian college play er of the year Shane Bascoe, Flack doesn't look at it that way. This year's Bruins team, he concedes, has about eight or nine freshman -- which is about the number of freshmen that were on his first Ontario championship team. "The second overtime we played (in the provincial over time win against Humber), we played with one third-year guy and four freshmen. And there was a 6 ' 1 " guy in the post and a 5 ' 1 1 " guy in the post. And they just defend so well and rebound so well we were able to pull it out." » At the same time, some veterans have improved like a fine wine. "Elvis Dennis is a perfect blueprint for what a guy should do with his career. He contributed to the provincial champi onship we won two years ago, but didn't play a lot and was dis appointed. "But he hung around and played even more last year. "And then this year, he was first team OCAA all-star and MVP of the (provincial championship) tournament. "We're quite proud of that because he stuck to the program that we try to preach. "In all honesty, only about 4 0 to 5 0 per cent of the guys that come in ever do, and, as I say, he's the perfect blueprint, who sticks to things, works hard and doesn't quit and ends up hav ing good things happen to him." THURSDAY'S FIRST ROUND MATCH-UPS: 2 p.m., 2 Grant MacEwan (Alberta) vs 7 St. Thomas (New Brunswick); 4 p.m., 3 SHERIDAN vs 6 Langara (B.C.); 6 p.m., 1 Cariboo vs 8 St. Lambert (Quebec); 8 p.m., 4 Humber vs 5 Champlain (Quebec). Exciting weekend for Ice Bears (Continued from page D5) MINOR OAKS HOCKEY ASSOCIATION INC. 1026 SPEERS RD. UNIT 8-8 (905) 338-9220 · FAX: (905) 338-9677 M inor Oaks H ockey Association Oakville Rangers Town Rep Looking for Coaches for the 2001/2002 Hockey Season O ln lh u j English Riding School BERTEV STABLES e-mail: b e rtin@ w ebtv.net 34 4 5 Dundos W. [H w y. # 5 ), Oakville (1 -1 / 2 m i. West of Hw y. # 2 5 ) w ebsite w w w .bertinstables.com (905)827-4678 ATOM AA, PEEWEE AA, MINOR BANTAM A, BANTAM AA Contact: Minor Oaks Hockey 905-338-9220 O a k v il l e S u m m e r M in o r H o c k e y L e a g u e M ay - August Schedule Including " vacation week" to assist with holiday planning. O O O O O N o n -co n tact 14-gam e schedule N o w eekends o r Fridays Prim e tim e evening games Games on brand new Olym pic size River Oaks surface O B alancing o f team s O D ivisions for boys & girls ages 5-15 O T rophies & awards O C ertified officials O C oaching & sponsorship positions available O N o fundraising m anager o f the Ice Bears which he took over this season. M etcalf is no stranger to River Oaks Arena, however, as he is the coach of the Oakville Rangers m inor atom AAA rep team which has qualified for its fourth straight year for the Ontario M inor Hockey A ssociation tournam ent o f cham pi ons. That gets under way M arch 31 in Richmond Hill. "I think the Olym pic pad in O akville is going to be a great venue. "It's a great facility ... This will be the only Olym pic sized ice sur face they play on while they're here (in Canada). "It's a huge ice surface. You're going to see a different game. It's going to be a lot o f fun." The Chinese national team are actually tuning up for next m onth's world cham pionships in M innesota. M etcalf admits to not knowing too much about them, other than they're a quality team. "They finished fifth last year at the world cham pionships." And apparently, they have the 'Tretiak' o f fem ale hockey. "They have a goalie nicknamed the Great Wall." "She holds them in most games, apparently -- that's w hat Theresa Brisson says." Brisson would know as she is the captain o f Team Canada, and so she will be suiting up against them at the Worlds. Incidentally, the Ice Bears also sport two players from the Japanese national team -- Aki Suda and Akiko H atanaka -- who will join up with their countrym ates at the Worlds. The Ice Bears also sport national team veterans Kathy M cCormack and Natalie Rivard, who, while not suiting up for Team Canada at the upcom ing Worlds, will be at the Olympic training camp in August in Calgary. So there's some pretty impressive talent that will take to the ice on Saturday. It's an exciting time for the Ice Bears. They opened their two-gam e playoff series with Brampton last weekend, losing a tough one, 3-2. "I was proud o f the girls. They certainly played with their hearts," said M efcalf. "It's ju st the way the puck bounced out there." They'll hook up for the second game this Sunday, 6 p.m ., at the Hershey Centre, and it will also be broadcast live on WTN. If the Ice Bears win, then it will go into overtim e to determ ine the series winner. Bram pton is a form idable foe, com piling a 31-6-3 regular season record while the Ice Bears posted a 21-16-3 record for 45 points. "Well, you know they've got half o f Team Canada -- and we don't," quipped M etcalf. At the same time his own team has also played well above .500, so they also know a thing or two about winning. "I think w e're doing great. We certainly have a good chance. We're definitely the under dog. But they did it last year," said M etcalf, refer ring to the fact that the team, which went under the banner o f the M ississauga Chiefs, won their open ing round series. D espite such an im portant play off date on Sunday, he said the team is more than happy for the chance to play a prestigious 'international friendly' on Saturday. "I think it's great. It's early enough (11:30 a.m. start), the girls will have time to recover." They are making one move to ease the burden, and that's by adding "a fourth line" o f some area ju nior players, who will be scouted for next season. "You're not playing another club team, you're playing a country, which is quite an honour. And it's exciting." M etcalf said his first year at the reigns o f the NW HL team has "been fine." Attendance at the Hershey C entre, where they're based out of, has been "anywhere from 500 to 700, which isn't too bad. It's the very beginning. It's the start o f this whole high level women's hockey." Also, he has been pleased that this will be the third game the team has played in Oakville, the last one just last month which was wildly successful as it was the headline game o f the O akville Hornets huge annual tournament. Gatquatic Divers bring back medal haul A contingent of nine Gatquatic Divers scooped up seven gold, three silver and two bronze medals at a meet in Gloucester over the Feb. 23/24 weekend. Seven clubs from the central and eastern Ontario competed. Here's a look at how our Oakville competitors fared. KELLY GOOD: competing in level 3, girls 14-15, finished second on the one-metre board. CHELSEA LEGGAT: competing in level 2, girls 12-13 years, finished third on the one-metre board. MELISSA MELIA: competing in level 1, girls 12-13, finished first on the one-metre board; and second on the three-metre board. KATIE QUINLAN: competing in level 1, girls 12-13, finished 5th on the one-metre board; and first on the three-metre board. s Appucations available a t River Oaks, G le n A bb ey , Mainway & Appleby C o lle g e arenas, F o r i n f o r m a t i o n o r t o r e c e iv e a n a p p li c a t i o n 1 (905) 510-1447 ___________________________T h is is not affiliated w ith the M O H A I Registration: Sunday, March 25th, 9:00 a .m .-11 aim . and Monday, March 26th, 6:30 p .m .-8:00 p.m. ___________ at River Oaks Community Centre i