U18 B Boys ride mid-season bounce-back to provincials

The St. Marys Legion U18 B Boys St. Marys Rock captured their Shamrocck League Championship and will compete at the OMHA Provincial Championship April 3-5. Pictured in the front row, from left to right, are Harper Murrell, Jaxon Brown, Cainan O’Doherty, Zach Matheson, Brody Cox and Isaac Cousineau. In the back row, from left, are coach Ian Bolton, Luke Richardson, Grayson Gerber, Owen Dittmer, Simon Greig, Andrew Davis, Cohen Ahrens, Hunter Pickel, Brody Higham, Owen Maxwell, Ethan St. Clair, coach Owen Hartman and head coach Sam Bolton.

By Spencer Seymour

Being resilient can take you far.

Just ask the St. Marys Legion U18 B Boys St. Marys Rock, who are headed for the Ontario Minor Hockey Association (OMHA) Provincial Championship April 3-5 thanks to a monstrous surge in the second half of their season, capped off by the Rock sweeping both their playoff semi-final and final series.

Head coach Sam Bolton credited the team for fighting back after a cold start to the campaign.

“We battled adversity at the start of the season,” Bolton told the Independent. “In our first 15 games of the year, we lost a lot of them, but I think they’re just a competitive group. For them, it’s just who they are as kids and who they are on the ice. They just didn’t give up. Even in big games, there is just no quitting them.”

Through their first 15 games of league play, the Rock managed just two victories, posting a 2-12-1 record. However, according to Bolton, everything changed after their 15th game of the regular season when they attended the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame Tournament in Parry Sound in December.

“The start of (the turnaround) was when we won our Parry Sound tournament,” said Bolton. “Since then, they finally realized we played some good teams, and they realized that we’re also a good team, and we can beat these good teams. They got tired of losing, and from that, they got a ton of motivation, and the season turned around from there. They started looking at provincials and thinking, ‘We can get there, we just have to put the effort in.’ And that’s what they did.”

Since the tournament in Parry Sound, the Rock has posted a sparkling 18-1-2 record, culminating in a three-game sweep of the East Lambton Eagles, during which St. Marys outscored the Eagles 15-3, followed by another sweep in the league final over the South Kent Lightning. The Rock outscored South Kent 13-4 in the league final, punctuated by a 6-0 win in the third and decisive game.

Following the Game 3 victory, Bolton raved about his team’s performance.

“From the start of the game, from the first shift of the first period through to the last moment, they played hard,” Bolton said. “They used their big bodies. They just didn’t give up. They didn’t let the foot off the gas, and that’s what we said to them before the game. This was going to be the toughest game to win, to close out a series, and they battled hard the whole time.”

Looking ahead to the provincial tournament, Bolton emphasized the team’s resiliency as the most important element of the team’s game in order to find success.

“The key for us is to not give up. They have to battle hard right from the start. That’s what we’ve been on them all year about is take it to our opponent right on the first shift and just play three full periods of hockey. Sometimes, they can take off some shifts, and that hurts us in big games, but they get right back into it and just battle hard, and if they can maintain that at provincials, that’s how we have a chance to have some success.”