We brought some extra kids out here this weekend to see what they could do and a lot of the kids stepped up into important roles for the tournament.
— Monte Taphorn
Sherring Gold Terrier Head Coach
The Yorkton Sherring Gold Peewee ‘AA’ Terriers held their annual home tournament this past weekend, welcoming the Estevan Westmoreland Bruins, Melville Millionaires, Brandon Major PeeWee Wheat Kings and Weyburn Youngfellows Wings to the Kinsmen Arena for three days of competitive hockey.
The Terriers went 1-2-1 over their four games, falling to the Millionaires 5-0 on Friday night in their tournament opening game before tying Brandon 2-2 Friday morning.
The Sherring Gold Terriers then dropped an 8-2 decision to Estevan Friday afternoon before picking up their lone win of the tournament with a 6-5 victory over Weyburn Friday evening. “Overall I’m happy with everyone’s effort out there and it was a good weekend,” said Sherring Gold Terrier head coach Monte Taphorn, adding that the results aren’t that important seeing as the Terriers were using the tournament for tryouts. “We brought some extra kids out here this weekend to see what they could do and a lot of the kids stepped up into important roles for the tournament.
“We really wanted to use this weekend as an evaluation process to determine what the best fit for our team will be and which kids will fit best with what we need to do and I think we figured that out.”
Taphorn said that he and his coaching staff had a lot of work to do in regards to picking players for the team, as the vast majority of the players will be new to peewee ‘AA’ hockey with only three returning players slated to make the team. “We have one goalie (Kael DePape) and two forwards (Kylen Taphorn and Rhys Maksimow) returning to the team this year so it’s certainly going to be a learning curve for many of the kids, but especially the first year kids that have never played ‘AA’ before,” offered Taphorn, adding that he expects the veterans to lead the way with their attitude. “Hopefully the vets will push each other as well as the new guys. We need them to be the leaders on the team, not just offensively but in the locker room as well.”
The Sherring Gold head coach also mentioned that the kids will have to be prepared for every team’s best effort every game, due to the Terriers being the defending five-time league champions. “We definitely have a bullseye on our backs and because of that we definitely have to work harder this year and outwork the teams so that’s going to be our focus early on.”
The Sherring Gold Terriers will officially open their 2015/16 SSMHL Peewee ‘AA’ Division regular season on the weekend of October 10 and 11 with a pair of home games against the Moose Jaw Warriors.
