West Ferris Sports Tornados Head Coach Lui Ricci goes over some drills with his team during practice Wednesday afternoon at Pete Palangio Arena.Photo by Steve Freyer
The West Ferris Sports Tornados Major Peewee ‘AA’ hockey squad will be heading down to Toronto this weekend to participate in the Ontario Hockey Federation Championships.
After a successful year that saw the club win several tournaments including the Northern Ontario Championships in March, the team was invited to take part in the tourney that sees champions from the GTHL, OMHA, Alliance hockey leagues as well as the host team North Toronto. The top teams in Ontario will compete against one another to determine the Major Peewee ‘AA’ provincial champions.
The Tornados haven’t seen game action in nearly three and a half weeks and will have to play multiple games daily over the weekend. Tornados Head Coach Lui Ricci believes his team might come out a little rusty, as it will take time to shake away the cobwebs of their long layoff. Ricci says the kids will gain their legs back quickly without it affecting them too much.
“It’s going to take us a little while to get going. You can practice all you want but if you’re not in game shape to play a game it’s going to take a little while, so I figure Friday morning, at least half way through the second or third period we’ll have our legs going,” Ricci said.
With each team guaranteed four games in the preliminary round of the tournament coming Friday and Saturday, the top four teams of the five team tourney will then move on to play Sunday in the semi finals to see who will square off in the championship game taking place Sunday afternoon. Despite not playing these teams before head to head, Ricci says he has seen the competition play at other tournaments and is very confident in a successful showing from his team against their opponents this weekend.
“We know that we can beat them,” Ricci said. “I really know that we’re going to do well this weekend,” he added.
The Tornados are a tight knit unit, with some kids having played together since novice. Coach Ricci says his team plays a good overall game with plenty of speed and are strong at every position.
“We have goal scorers, role players, good defenseman and our goaltending has been phenomenal for us this year,” Ricci explained enthusiastically.
Having played in the Bantam league this year, against kids up to two years older and finishing second place in the regular season, only to fall short in the semi-finals, Ricci thinks the experience has paid off in their tournaments they’ve played during the season.
“The kids had a great year in that particular league, it made them young men actually, knowing how to take body checks and give body checks,” Ricci said. “We’ve won tournaments in Mississauga. We won a tournament in Niagara Falls, New York and of course winning the NOHA. Also we were consolation finalists in a bantam tournament in Sudbury, so it’s really helped our kids throughout the course of the year.”
The Tornados open their tournament with a pair of games, the first Friday morning at 11:30a.m against the host Toronto club at the Ricoh Centre. Their second game comes at 4:30p.m Friday against London, while their third and fourth games are scheduled for Saturday.
Win or lose this weekend, it will be the end of the year for the squad and Coach Ricci is proud of every member of his hockey team for their effort this season.
“You always expect to win, but like I told these kids before it’s an All-Ontario-Championship, it may be the first for some kids, it may be the last. Go out there enjoy and have fun, listen to detail to what the coaches say, but most importantly have fun doing it,” Ricci said.
