Going up against the best players in the province in Regina over the Easter weekend was just what Maymont’s Ashton Harris hoped it would be.
Other than a nasty illness that he came down with just as the SaskFirst bantam tournament began.
“My family was starting to get sick the day before the tournament so I was hoping that I wouldn’t catch it,” Harris said. “Unfortunately, I ended up getting sick when the weekend began, so that changed things a bit.
“Overall though, I felt like I still played pretty well. I did well on the face-offs and played well on defence, and I tried to make as many hard hits as I could. However, it gets to be a little bit tough to do that as well as you would like when you don’t have quite as much energy as you usually do.”
The 14-year-old forward was on a team with number of players from the north region of the province.
They finished in sixth place at the tournament with a record of 1-2-1.
“We didn’t play quite as well as we had at a tune-up tournament in December,” Harris said. “The communication and chemistry that we had then just wasn’t there over the weekend.
“When you have more scouts coming out to watch, there’s some jitters that’s for sure, but I think I was able to do a good job of blocking that out as well as I could.”
Having the chance to take part in the tournament was an added bonus for Harris, who was part of a Battleford Barons team that picked up on;y one win in the Saskatchewan Bantam AA Hockey League this season.
“It was a pretty tough year so to be able to go to the SaskFirst tournament was a pretty nice reward,” said Harris, who has seven points for the Barons this year. “There are lot of players who already signed with Midget AAA teams for next season, so it was good to be up against that competition.
“Even though our season wasn’t the greatest, I was able to develop a lot as a player with the Barons. I was able to have quite a lot of ice time and lots of time with the puck, which was great for me.”
Harris had a nice warm-up event prior to going to Regina, as he took part in the Battlefords North Stars spring prospect camp two weeks ago.
“That was a really good experience,” Harris said. “It’s really fun to see where you are at against much older guys and what you have to work on in order to make it to that level.
“Ideally, I would like to play for the Midget AAA Stars next year, but that might be a bit of a stretch for me right away so I’m hoping to make it on the Midget AA Barons roster. During the summer, I’ll be working on getting in better shape to achieve that goal.”
