Gold and two Silver for Lightning teams at 2015 Southern Regional Ringette Championships
After finishing one and two at the OCRRL Championships a week earlier, the Lightning’s U12 Chamandy and U12 Mews teams found themselves going head to head once again, this time in the final of the SRRL Regional Championships.
Despite a winning regular season record over the Chamandy team, the Mews team had been unable to defeat the Chamandy team at tournaments. However, the Mews team finally recorded a tournament win over the Chamandy squad (8-6), while going undefeated during round robin play of the SRRL Regional Championships to finish first in their division. The round robin loss to the Mews team meant that the Chamandy team had to wait for the outcome of the final round robin game between Paris and Caledonia before learning that they would advance for a rematch against the Mews team in the final. The two teams provided onlookers with a very entertaining final. With the score knotted at 4-4, the Mews team took a penalty with two minutes remaining in regulation time. The Chamandy team took advantage on the ensuing power play when Diana Chaves netted the winner to give the Chamandy team the gold medal while relegating the Mews team as silver medalists for the second week in a row. Still, a great finish to the season for both Lightning squads.
In U10 action, the Lightning’s Harling and Laughlin teams found themselves in the unusual position of knowing that the outcome of their final round robin match up against each other would determine which one of the two Lightning squads would advance to the final. After trading goals early, the Harling squad scored four unanswered goals to take a 5-1 lead at the half. The deficit proved to be too much for the Laughlin squad to rebound from as team Harling went on to an 8-2 decision to advance to the final against the Mississauga Mustangs. In the final, there was no shortage of goals with the lead changing hands on several occasions. The Lightning took an early 1-0 lead before the Mustangs rallied for a 2-1 advantage. The Lightning then took a 3-2 lead, however the Mustangs came back for a 4-3 advantage before the Lightning tied it up at 4-4. It didn’t look good when the Mustangs scored 4 unanswered goals to take an 8-4 lead, however the Lightning battled all the way back with four unanswered goals of their own to tie the score 8-8 with just over ten minutes remaining in regulation. However, the Lightning were unable to keep the momentum going as the Mustangs went on another four goal outburst in the final five minutes to win 12-8 and send the Lightning home as Silver medalists.
The U14-Giordan team did not have any trouble scoring goals as they netted 29 goals in four games to average over 7 goals a game. However their opponents did not have any trouble scoring goals either as the Lightning were unable to advance to the final after finishing with a 0-3-1 record. The Lightning’s lone tie came against the eventual gold medalists from Niagara Falls.
The U16-Thompson team did not advance to medal play after dropping a 7-3 decision to the eventual gold medalists from Caledonia before suffering a couple of one goal losses in their remaining round robin games.