Another great year of Grizzlies’ hockey coming to a close

MO CRANKER

Alberta Newspaper Group

It’s been another successful year of hockey for the Redcliff Minor Hockey Association.
The association has eight teams this year — icing roughly 100 kids — and seven of the teams made playoffs this year.
“All of our teams have done pretty well and some of them started playoffs last weekend (Feb. 23/24),” said Redcliff Minor Hockey vice president Ryan Dreger. “We have one team that missed out on playoffs, but the other teams did really well and made it in.
“We’re proud of all of our kids no matter the result – they work hard and it shows.”
Redcliff has one novice team, two atom teams, two pewee teams, a bantam team and a midget team.
The novice squad went into Saturday March 2 in a 1-1 series tie against Brooks. ____ won the deciding game.
The atom Tier 6 team took its first round series and played their first game of the finals Sunday March 3 in Redcliff. They won/lost _-_.
The peewee Tier 4 team earned a bye after finishing first and took on Vauxhall in game one on Saturday March 2.
The peewee Tier 5 team also finished in first and got a bye into the finals. They don’t play for another week.
The bantam Tier 4 squad finished third but fell to Brooks in the first round of the playoffs in two games.
The midget team’s fate was decided Wednesday night and the team won the right to represent Zone 6 at provincials — which take place in Fort Macleod on March 22-24.
The eight teams is down a bit from previous years, says Dreger, but added he understands that there’s a lot going on for people.
“Kids have a lot to do nowadays,” he said. “We have as many teams as we usually do for our older kids, but the really young kids have one or two teams less this year.
“We’re happy to have the numbers we have and we’re looking forward to our teams having success in playoffs.
Despite the on-ice success, Redcliff hockey players experienced tragedy earlier in the year when 10-year-old Dexter Druar passed away suddenly.
“The players really rallied around Dexter,” said Dreger. “It was really tough for everyone and the kids tried to step up where they could by raising money and showing support.”