Local teams seeing hard work paying off heading into postseason

MO CRANKER

Alberta Newspaper Group

The Bow Island Minor Hockey Association is looking forward to the playoffs.

The last day of regular season games was Feb 17 and the first round of playoffs took place over the weekend (Feb. 23-24).
The atom team that is combined with Foremost finished fourth in tier four and they will play Irvine in round one.
The atoms will look to stave off elimination after losing Game 1 8-6 on Sunday. Game 2 is set for March 2 (1 p.m.) in Foremost.
The Foremost-Bow Island peewee squad placed second in their division and had a bye over the weekend.
The combined bantam team finished third in their tier three division and took on the sixth seeded Nanton squad over the weekend. Nanton took the series in two games.
The midget team finished second in tier three and played Bassano over the weekend.
The Bow Island/Foremost team won both games over Bassano and will face the winner of Redcliff/Coaldale in the semi-final.
“Overall we’ve got some really strong teams this year,” said Bow Island Minor Hockey Association president Chantel Timmons. “We’ve got really good coaches — I think every team has a great coaching staff that has taught the kids a lot over the season.
“I feel like we have some teams that can go far and make a good run this year — from our perspective, as the minor hockey organization, we’re pretty proud of the kids.”
Timmons says success is great for the minor hockey group to see, but fun is always the end goal.
“It’s a long season of hockey for these kids and there’s a lot of travel sometimes,” she said. “I think when you have kids waking up this far into a season and wanting to play more hockey and to keep going — that’s a success for us.
“The teams are having fun and we’re always happy to see that.”
While the group is happy with another fun, successful season, Timmons says the group is still hoping to get more kids involved locally.
“There’s just so many different things that kids can be involved in,” she said. “I’ve been on the board for years and we’re probably down to half of the kids we used to have.
“We used to lace up against Foremost and play against them, but now we combine teams with them to make it all work.”