U18 Warriors building confidence from the Ajax Tournament win

The Stratford U18 Warriors are still in good spirits after winning the Ajax Winterlude Tournament on Dec. 14.

Owen Chambers, Cam Parsons and Rylan DeBoeck shared their thoughts on the win.

“It was good … and it's good to come out with a win, especially when it was quite unexpected, going against a lot of better teams than us, but we pulled through,” Chambers said.

“It was a surprise, but I think the results come from a lot of hard work from the boys. We put in some good practices before the tournament, and the results showed,” Parsons said.

“Oh, they were super unexpected. I mean, we came in with one win, came out with the championship, taking out even a top-two-ranked team. Feels great to make that underdog story happen and come out on top,” DeBoeck said.

Stratford resumed regular season play on the road against the Kitchener Jr. Rangers on Dec. 18. Kitchener scored seven unanswered goals in the final 35 minutes of play as the Warriors were soundly beaten by the top-ranked ALLIANCE team, the Rangers, 9-1.

The Warriors turned around on Dec. 20 as they scored all three goals in the third period to shut out the Jr. Sting in Sarnia for their second regular season win in 2025-26. The next day in Cambridge, the Warriors scored four unanswered goals, three in the second period, to pick up another win, beating the Hawks 4-2. But on Jan.4, however, the Warriors dropped a 5-1 decision to the Waterloo Wolves at the Allman Arena.