The Ice opened the event with a pair of wins, defeating Twin Cities 10-0 and the Regina Saints 6-5 in an extra inning before falling 6-5 to the Saskatoon Hustlers and dropping an 8-0 decision to the eventual champion Saskatoon Phantoms. That created a must-win game against the South East Hawks, where the Ice battled to a 7-5 victory to earn a spot in the final four playoff round.
There, they found themselves in a close game with the Regina Royals, with the two teams tied 2-2 after three innings. The Royals would go ahead 6-3 in the third and eventually take a 7-4 victory to eliminate the Ice, but is was as close as could be in the final couple innings.
“We stranded 11 baserunners, so we were right there and we had our opportunities,” said Ice coach Shawn Okerstrom. “I think we showed we were right there with every team we played, we had one of the strongest defences, for sure, it’s just having that confidence in the batter's box sometimes and just not stranding runners.”
Making things all the more impressive is the Ice found that success despite taking the field with 10 of their 13 players as first-year Bantams – the majority of which finished second at the Pee Wee championships last season.
“The mental game is huge, they go in against a team like Saskatoon Phantoms where they’re pretty much all second years and they’re thinking ‘oh, they’re better than us’ just because of that, so that was one thing to get around,” Okerstrom said. “But I don’t think we met a team we couldn’t beat, and they didn’t give up. Once they started believing in themselves, they started fighting back and coming back in games and winning.”
Case in point, a tournament in Minot earlier this season where they faced a pair of hard-hitting Midget-aged squads and fell behind early – including a double-digit deficit in one game – before staging impressive comebacks.
That kind of heart and desire is something that has the Ice looking forward to big things next season as a veteran second-year team. But there is a caveat…
“A lot of it will depend on how many girls come back since they’re at that age where they start to specialize in sports,” Okerstrom explained. “We have a lot of players who are multi-sport athletes, so we’ll have to see what everyone decides to do. But if we get most of them back, we should have a really good team with a lot of experience.”
