February 2, 2018 · 0 Comments
By Brian Lockhart
Teams from around the province arrived in Orangeville over the weekend for the annual Sweetheart Tournament hosted by the Orangeville Girls Hockey Association.
The tournament is so large the schedule featured games at four venues – the Alder Street arena, Tony Rose arena, Teen Ranch in Caledon, and even at the Erin arena.
Around 80 teams took part in this year’s event coming from as far away as Sudbury.
Play got underway on Thursday (Jan. 25) night at the Alder Street arena with the welcoming ceremony taking place on Friday night.
Games were scheduled all weekend long with the finals being held on Sunday, January 28.
Over the four days around 200 games were scheduled and played.
Divisions entered round-robin style tournament play with divisions with more teams entered playing an elimination round heading to the finals.
To really showcase some hockey skills, a skills competition was held on Saturday that gave the girls the opportunity to go head-to-head on the ice in a variety of contests.
The Orangeville tigers Bantam House League team came out on top in their skills competition.
Girls hockey in Orangeville started in 1974 and the original team was called the Orangeville Sweethearts – hence the name of the current tournament.
Almost the entire original Sweetheart team from 1974 returned for the tournament along with their coach Jim Cronin and took part in the welcoming ceremony.
Once the tournament got underway the competition was fierce as teams battled hard on the ice in an effort to advance to the next round.
Games started as earl as 7:00 a.m. to accommodate the full schedule and going as late as a 10:30 p.m. start on Saturday evening.
During regular season the Orangeville Tigers play in the Lower Lakes Female Hockey League.