Local Ringette team comes home with Silver

At the second day of competition at the Ontario Ringette Provincial "A" championships, the West Ferris Belles met the surprising host team, Upper Ottawa Valley. Going into the competition, UOV was thought to be the weakest team in
Belle. However, their play to date indicates they are much stronger than expected, having split their games on day one and giving West Ferris a real scare on day two.

UOV opened the scoring in the third minute of play to take an early lead. West Ferris rallied with 5 goals in a row by 5 different scorers before UOV replied with their 2nd goal, ending the first period with a West Ferris 5-2 lead. The second period was all UOV, bringing the score to 5-4 before the West Ferris coaching staff called a timeout to settle the team. This strategy worked, as Tara Roy scored her
second goal of the game to clinch the victory with :35 seconds left, winning by a score of 6-4.

In their second game against Hamilton, the Belles were up against one of the top seeds of this tournament. They were also looking for a measure of revenge, as Hamilton is the team that eliminated Ferris at last year's Provincials. The play was close in the first period, with Ferris holding a slim 2-1 lead on goals by Amy Cook and Mel Lauzon. The second period saw Ferris score twice (Jessica Trottier, her
first goal of the tournament and Cook) to take a commanding 4-1 lead. The locals ran into penalty trouble late, with 3 players in the box with a minute left to play. However, Ferris held on, allowing no more goals to win 4-1. This makes the Ferris Belle team a perfect 4-0 going into Saturday, the last day of round robin competition.

The CTS Canadian Career College/North Bay Paramedics Junior team needed to get a win in their morning game to stay in contention for a medal and they didn't disappoint their fans. They came out flying against Gloucester/Cumberland in their morning game, scoring twice in the first minute of play with Brianna Belzile scoring her first of 3 goals and Drew Elliot scoring the other. They continued to storm the
Gloucester net, putting together a 7-0 lead after one period and setting the cruise control to easily win 7-1. Other goal scorers in this game were Janelle Martin,
Sarah Trottier and Amanda Storie.

The Juniors lost their second game on Friday, losing a heartbreaker in overtime to the undefeated team from Whitby.

West Ferris scored in the first minute on a goal by Sarah Trottier. Whitby and Ferris then traded goals (Janelle Martin scoring for Ferris) to end the first period
with Ferris leading 2-1.

The second period saw continued close play, with the lead changing twice in the first 10 minutes of play. Whitby scored first to tie the game, then Sarah Trottier scored her second goal to regain the lead. Whitby replied with 2 goals of their own to take the lead at the 5:00 minute mark, at which point Ferris called a timeout. This strategy worked as the locals tied the game with 1:54 left in regulation time, forcing overtime.

Unfortunately, the locals ran into penalty trouble in the first overtime period and with two of our players in the box, Whitby scored the game winner at 7:44.

This leaves the Juniors with a record of 2-2. However, due to the close nature of play at Provincials, they are tied for third place with Valley East.

Whitby and host Upper Ottawa Valley are tied for 1st at 4-0. The top three teams advance to the medal round, so our team is not out yet. Saturday has West Ferris playing
undefeated Upper Ottawa Valley in the morning and then 6th place Mitchell in the evening.

Play continued on Saturday for the Belles, where they met defending champion Chatham and NE rival Timmins. In their morning game, the Belles came out flat, allowing defending champion Chatham to dictate the play and losing by a score of 5-2. Goalscorers were Sara Lutecki and Jana Burgess. This loss gave West Ferris a record of 4-1 with one game remaining.

In their last game of the round robin on Saturday afternoon, West Ferris was playing against Timmins for the right to get a bye directly to the gold medal game. The
loser of this game would be tied for 3rd place and would need to play through the semi-finals in order to challenge for gold, so this game was very important to both teams. The rink was packed with fans from all teams as this was the last game of the round robin and the fate of 4 different teams rested in the result of this game.

Timmins came out flying and built a 2-1 lead by the end of the first period. They scored again early in the 2nd period to take a 3-1 lead, leaving the locals in a tough spot. Jana Burgess started the comeback for Ferris with just over 6 minutes left to play to make the score 3-2, and she scored again with 4:25 left to tie the game. At 1:30, Sara Lutecki completed the comeback, scoring a beautiful goal on a breakaway to make the comeback complete and to propel the Ferris team to the gold medal game.

In the championship game, Ferris met the team from Chatham who gave them their only loss in the round robin. The highlight of the game for Ferris was the goal scored by Kerry Doucette, who moved up to play forward as Ferris was short a player for this game. Doucette intercepted an errant Chatham clearing pass, skated up the wing and wired a beautiful wrist shot over the shoulder of Chatham goalie Ellen Sinclair. Unfortunately, this was all Ferris would score, losing 4-1 but still coming home with a silver medal.

Other team members include Amy Cook, Andy Francom, Julia Knox, Leanne Lajoie, Kelsey Lecappelain, Jessica Trottier, Mel Lauzon and Tara Roy.


Submitted to BayToday.ca