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Flyers Bantam AE1 team claim OMHA championship

March 23, 2018   ·   0 Comments

Written By Brian Lockhart

The Orangeville Flyers Bantam AE 1 team are OMHA champions after winning the final series over the Peterborough Petes in four games.

The final game ended with a 3-2 win for the Flyers in a fast paced match between two highly skilled teams at Tony Rose arena on Sunday, March 18.

“We had a very successful season. We lost all of four games all season and tied couple,” said Flyers coach Jamie Armstrong. “Our team believed in our systems. We practiced really hard and we played six man hockey to include our goalies. Everyone played offence, everyone played defence. What we always do before a period is we focus on what the other team is going to do and what we need to do and capitalize to make sure that doesn’t happen. It was all about six man, hard defence in our zone, get the puck out, get the puck low, cycle it, and work our systems.”

The series got underway on Saturday, March 10, in Peterborough. Game one ended with a 6-4 win for the Flyers.

The teams were back at it the next day in Peterborough and the series was tied when the Petes won the second game 2-1.

The series moved to Orangeville for game three on Saturday, March 17, at the Alder Street arena.

The Flyers got the edge with a 4-2 win to take the lead in the best to six points set up, and could win the series with a win on Sunday. If they came up short the series would take another game to decide a champion.

Orangeville opened the scoring at 29 seconds into the game on Sunday whenNolen Ritchie got the opening goal.

Peterborough tied it up with five minutes left on the clock.

There was no scoring in the second period and the teams returned for third to battle it out and see who could go ahead.

Midway in the frame the Petes took a lead on a goal to make it 2-1.

It was again tied up when Sami Hundal scored for Orangeville.

With 3:39 left on the clock, Luke Downard scored to put the Flyers ahead. They held on for the rest of the game to take the win and claim the OMH championship.

“It was a big game. It was entertaining to play in and sure it was the same to watch,” summed up Flyers centre Luke Downard after the game. “It meant everything to us. Since the beginning of the season this is all we wanted. We worked hard every day, every practice for this moment.”

Teammate, defenceman, Nolen Ritchie agree that the team was focused on this end result. “This is what we all worked for since the start of the season,” Nolen said. “Since the first puck drop we gave it 110 per cent. We were all focused. The first game down there, they should have won but it went our way. The second game they won, and it should of gone our way. Today, we were all focused right from the puck drop. All the goals weren’t exactly pretty but we got shots on net.”

The winning Flyers team were presented with the championship and individual medals after Sunday’s win.


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