Mar 19, 2009 | dhill | 1692 views
Bitter Sweet Season for Coach Dan Hill
What a great season the Bantam Reps had this year, winning the WOAA Bantam "C" Championship and coming within a goal of making it to the OMHA Finals.
Although the teams accomplishments were great this year Coach Dan Hill can't help but be saddened by the fact that this group of boys will likely never suit up again as a team. With Midget being 3 years and with guys starting to go in different directions with their hockey careers this was likely the last time this particular group will get to play together. Some of the faces have changed over the years but the core group have stayed the same since 2003 when they won their first WOAA Trophy as the Novice Rep team. In 2005 the boys lost in game #5 of the final against Wingham to fall short of the Atom Rep title that year. The 2007 team was very strong winning the WOAA Pee Wee trophy and went on to lose to Wasaga Beach in the OMHA playdowns.
The 2009 team had a tremendous playoff run starting with a 5 game series win over long term rivals Lucknow (who had already beaten Seaforth), to move on to play Durham in the WOAA final taking the series to 6 games in a best of 5 series by tieing game 5 at 1-1 and winning game 6 with a final score of 1 -0! The OMHA playdowns started with Minto taking Shelburne 3 games to 1 in the quarter final, followed by the road warrior OMHA semi-final series against Lakefield (just north of Peterborough). This series has already been well documented but the best of 5 series also took 6 games to complete with Minto losing in OT to miss their trip to the OMHA Finals by 1 goal.
Having coached these boys through all of these successful seasons has been a pleasure and a roller coaster ride of emotions for Coach Hill and he with his coaching staff of Lee McMullen and Mark Leslie and Trainers Steve Cook and Randy Riff, would like to wish the boys all the best and much success in their hockey careers going forward. Thanks for the memories Boys!