Despite losing all three of their home games, both of Ponoka’s Peewee hockey teams had a fun weekend.
Their home tournament started Friday, Dec. 11 and ended on the Sunday with a food drive for the Ponoka Food Bank as part of the weekend activities.
The Ponoka Elks Peewee A team did not win any games, said coach Jeff Jones, who was impressed with the teams who took part. “We invited a high calibre of competition and even though we lost three games, the team played well and worked very hard as a group.”
He said the Elks improved on their forecheck and started working well as a team. Coaches are going to work on several key skills such as skating, puck handling and intensity on the ice.
“They need to be able to play at a high intensity for 60 minutes,” said Jones.
Despite those challenges, he was impressed with their overall improvement over the weekend, especially with tough teams against them.
For the Ponoka Quality Paint and Collision Peewee B team, the results were the same. Coach Ryan Smith said despite these losses, coaches worked to keep players’ confidence up. He added that at the end of the day, the goal is for the kids to have a fun weekend.
While there were some challenges, their second game against Vegreville was a close 4-3 loss. “They played their hearts out,” said Smith.
With those losses come improvements and Smith suggests they will be a better team for it.
“They came together as a team I think compared to the whole year,” said Smith.
The entire coaching staff thanked parents for their dedication to the tournament. As for the food bank donations the idea came about because of the time of year and for the need. Over the weekend, a net was set aside for teams to fill it up with food. The “Stuff a Net to End Hunger” idea came from Wendy Jacklin.